


Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

by anima



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Drugs, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:55:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anima/pseuds/anima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All this time, Jade's been right under your nose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to finally grow a pair and post some of the homestuck stuff I've been doing.  
> An AU where sburb never happened, Bro's still dead, and the human!trolls do a shit ton of drugs.  
> Referenced Gamkat is set to hang around, as will Dave and Terezi being brorails.

**Prologue**

Your name is Dave Strider, and you’re definitely trying to pay attention.

The object of said attention is lecturing you across the battered wooden table of your shared booth, gesturing with her carefully manicured fingernails like you’re a low-brow Sicilian mafioso who just talked serious shit about the big man. This girl definitely doesn’t have any blood south of Scandinavia in her admittedly fine body, but you’re pretty sure you’re still sleeping with the fishes tonight.

“So? Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

You spend a cool fifteen seconds milking your Heineken, upturning the bottle until the exposed light bulb over your heads stings your eyes even through your rad shades. You really just want to scram out of this lame dive bar and take care of older-than-teen drama later, but judging by the look Hot Barbie’s sporting, you’re pretty sure the side of your face is gonna get an express ticket to Bitchslap Town if you try to pull anything other than an apology.

“Well, I’m sorry I didn’t call you back for two weeks.” Almost half-true. “And I’m sorry I made you freak the fuck out.” A clean 7.5/10 on the truthdar. “And I’m sorry you walked in on me shotgunning a hit off my blind, topless neighbor’s bong.” The crowd goes wild as you stick the landing on an olympic display of truth-telling.

Blonde Bombshell does a well-practiced routine of indignation, her teeth gritting in the most ladylike manner you’ve ever seen.

“How can you say it like that? Like you don’t even care?”

Maybe because you’ve only known her for three weeks? Or that she was supposed to be a one night stand? Or that you met her while you were royally hammered?

“Listen. You’re a solid 8 on the cool scale, and it’s been pretty sweet—”

“No, David. You listen.”

You feel a little sick and a lot less guilty after witnessing such a horrendous mutilation of your god-given name. You stop beating around the bush and give that arrogant hedge a piece of your goddamn mind.

“Okay, first off, my name is Dave, as in ‘Dave Strider’s a pretty cool guy and not a pansy named David’. Second, I understand why it might be hard to let an infallible stud like me go, but—”

Well, you’ll be damned. You didn’t think Pretty in Pink had it in her to slap the shades off your face but there they are, skidding all over the gross tile floor while your cheek starts to burn from the impact. You really hope they didn’t pick up any scratches on their thrilling beer-stained joyride.

“Go to hell, you insufferable prick!”

You feel a jolt of shock run through your spine as The It Girl From Hell swings out of the booth with a flourished middle finger and pauses to shatter your shades under her heel. Time slows down like you’re in some shitty made-for-TV movie as you watch the plastic bend and crack, sending fragments flying even further across the floor. You take a moment to regain your cool; she didn’t how irreplaceable they were, that they were the only memento of your bro you’d brought to the city with you...

You’re out of the booth and in her grill in a flash, your face a blank slate even without your shades to mask the anger brewing in your eyes. She meets you with a narrow glare, her chin turned up a good 30 degrees to hold your stare.

“That was some rash shit to pull right after I gave you a gracious 8 on the cool scale.”

America’s Next Worst Model makes an unironically cliche scoffing noise in the back of her throat.

“Are you really going to cause a scene over those _stupid_ glasses?”

You allow yourself a wry smirk, letting the words settle on the floor beside your shades’ mangled plastic corpse.

“Of course not. What kind of a childish piece of shit would I be if I stomped all over my safety blanket and hurled shit at the walls just because you just express fedexed my only pair of sweet pointy anime shades to my bro’s eternally rad soul in anime smuppet heaven?”

“Dave...” You feel your lips lock into a familiar deadpan as you dodge around Count Bitchula’s extended hand, swiping the biggest remnants of your shades off the floor by your feet and dumping them unceremoniously into your coat pocket as you start putting distance between you and the uncompromising look of pity you know is still aimed straight at you.

“Dave, I’m sorry, I didn’t know!” You don’t bother turning around or unclenching your jaw as you offer your final words of wisdom to Tickle Me Dimewhore:

“Of course you didn’t. Tell the next DJ who gets one of your shitty blowjobs under his tables I said sup.”

You’ve got to hand it to yourself, you feel cool as fuck walking away with your back turned to that verbal bomb blast. You don’t even look the waiter in the eye as you drop a wrinkled 20 on the end of the bar, muttering a “keep the change” as you pull the door open with a soft chime. You hope that takes care of your tab in this place; you don’t want to see this little slice of hell for a good, long time.

You dig your hands into your pockets to brace against the sharp November wind, hissing profanities as your index finger makes sweet love to the jagged edge of one of the shards of your old shades. You don’t realize how fast you’ve been walking until you reach the stoop of your building, white breath condensing in front of your face in staccato bursts. You formally slice up your hand to all hell as you dig around for your key, looking up only when your shoulder brushes against another tenant’s in the stairwell. The instant recoil from your glare elicits a dry chuckle as you remember why you wore the damn shades so much. Echoes of stern voices far above your head intermingle with piercing wails in your ears as your feet carry you around a corner.

_That boy is wild, no discipline, no control...just look at his eyes, he’s like a monster! Last week he almost took poor Tommy’s eye out when he put a knife in the fridge. Can you even believe that?_

_The other children don’t even want to be around him, he always starts a fight and comes up with some silly excuse...something about ‘strifing’._

_Can’t blame the poor thing, raised by that no-good brother of his with no one else in the world. Still...there’s something about him that’s almost frightening..._

You don’t knock on Terezi’s door as much as you try to punch its lights out. You hear the chain lock slide within the minute and your fembro-slash-neighbor pulls it open just enough to slip her head out, angling towards the general region of your face with a jagged grin that used to give you the creeps.

“Too bad I’m blind, there’s no way I can tell who’s standing here trying to break my fucking door down.”

“Yeah, I was just trying to drown out the sound of you stumbling into all your shit in there,” You spit back without missing a beat. You don’t realize how wound up you’d gotten until you feel yourself easing from the familiarity of the exchange. “Can I come in?”

“Weeeelllllllll, I don’t want to tempt you alone in here with my female sensibilities. The whole floor would start talking, you’d become a legend. I don’t know if you’re ready to handle that.”

“My saving grace is that you can’t see for shit, you’re pretty much the only woman on earth who wouldn’t have ripped my clothes off my body by now.” She concedes with a smirk as she disappears into the pitch-black hallway behind her, letting the door swing forward on its own.

Your fingers automatically find the light switch on the wall as you kick the door shut behind you, eyes tracing the familiar bizarro decor in Terezi’s apartment. Her childishly surreal art is framed along the walls, nearly all of them hanging crooked. The only sign of actual food in the kitchen is a mile-high pile of takeout boxes and empty Dorito’s bags (her excuse was always that you’re generally out of your goddamn mind if you want to trust a blind girl with an open flame, and you couldn’t really argue with that) and the only furniture in the too-big living room is a coat hanger sporting her cane and a strange teal number you’ve never actually seen her wear, a coffee table safely above shin-fucking height, and a huge L-shaped couch weakly illuminated by the flicker of Terezi’s lighter over her loaded bowl. You had to hand it to the girl, she could light up with military precision.

“Come on Coolkid, don’t be shy.” You manage to crack out a chuckle as she pats the couch next to her. “I’ll even give you the first hit.”

“Somebody call the presses, I’ve hit the goddamn big leagues.”

“Keep it up and I almost won't be way out of your league.”

“A man sure can dream, can't he?” You feel the tension rippling out of your shoulders as you guide Terezi’s hands to your lips and take a long pull, swallowing down the pungent smoke before you let it slip past your teeth.

“I heard your phone ringing a bunch of times a while ago,” Terezi notes after you pass the bowl back and forth a few more times in silence. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” You shrug noncommittally. “This girl I picked up at a gig a while ago wouldn’t get off my shit, so I dumped her and she gave my shades a hero’s death.” Terezi, queen of maintaining personal space that she is, leans over and wriggles her fingers along your temple, searching in vain for the pointed rims of your dearly departed shades. Her lips curve into a weird frown and you find yourself sympathizing with every poor son of a bitch who’s ever tried to figure you out as you wonder what she’s thinking behind her candy red blind kid glasses.

“So they really are gone, huh?” She says it like the objective fact of life that it is, and you’re inexplicably grateful for that.

“Yep.” You brandish the pieces out of your pocket, too mellowed out to give a shit that a few have spots of your blood on them, and Terezi holds them up and inspects them one by one like there’s actually a reliable light source in the room and she can actually see jack shit. You’re not sure if that’s actually the funniest thing you’ve seen all day or if Terezi just got stronger weed, but you’re grinning like a motherfucker.

“The military burial’s at 2 tomorrow, I expect a speech that’ll make the most thoroughly hardened badass drown in his own tears. I want you to flood the entire state of New York with the volume of tears shed over my valiant shades. The president’s going to get a call from FEMA and be all, ‘What’s going down, did a hurricane hit?’ and the FEMA guy’s gonna go ‘No sir, today was the burial of Dave Strider’s personal heirloom of fucking indomitable coolness and his friend Terezi’s speech made the entire goddamn state of New York flood with tears’ and he’s going to put you on the phone and you’re going to make the goddamn president cry. It’s going to need to bring on the fucking sobpocalypse, is what I’m saying.”

You don’t realize you’ve been rambling until you’re cut off by Terezi’s quiet cackle, her trembling shoulders throwing the dim light of the bowl in crazy shadows all over the walls.

“Don’t worry, my speech is going to be a national emergency. Gotta make your bro proud, right?”

You answer by tapping her hand for the bowl; you both know where the boundary lies on that conversation, and its a clean hundred feet in front of the fucking front door. Might as well hand you a shotgun and call you Old Man Dave, because nobody’s getting within a mile of that shit while you’ve still got air in your decrepit lungs. Terezi complies with the pot but not with your obvious reluctance.

“Dave, it’s okay to be upset about this.”

You sigh out the smoke in your mouth and offer a backhit while you let your head loll over the back of the couch. Terezi would buy a couch that’s only comfortable for fucking midgets like her.

“The shades were my bro’s. My bro’s dead as the grim reaper’s jammed doornail. I’m over it. I’ve been to therapy, I’ve talked it the fuck out.” Terezi sits in silence for a while, but you know better than to get your hopes up. She can nail you like a fucking prosecutor when she wants to.

“You never told me you went to therapy.” Shit. Boobs McStompy really opened pandora’s box of stupid Dave problems tonight.

“Yeah, I think it was somewhere between pissed foster families 6 and 7,” you nonchalantly tell the ceiling. “I got assured I’m not a psychopath and a prescription for some meds I never actually took, and that was about it.”

“Did it actually help?”

You snort at the sudden Q and A. All you had to do was slide over so your head was on the armrest of the couch and you’ve got yourself a real-life shrink session right in the comfort of Terezi’s home. It reminds you of someone else you haven’t thought about in ages.

“Did it help to hear that it was normal to beat the shit out of other kids and cling to a pair of glasses like they were family? Oh yeah, cleared me right up. I’m a model citizen now, as you can fucking clearly see with your eyes that totally work.”

“I’m deeply offended, Dave.”

“I’d show you my trigger warning but it’s tattooed on my ass, plus you’re still fucking blind.” You both snicker at your stupid comeback, and a knot you don’t remember forming in your chest comes undone as the tension in the room eases.

“How’s that stupid douche you’ve been seeing? What’s his shit, Cancat or something?” As fun as that little feelings jam was, you opt to lunge at a change of topic before Terezi can get anything else in edgeways.

“Who, Karkat? I ditched that horse’s ass ages ago. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a miserable excuse for a mature adult in my entire life, and that includes you.”

“Be careful with how you’re inflating my ego, I don’t want that shit going to my head.” You can feel Terezi’s laugh bouncing off the walls, mixing discordantly with the wildly shifting shadows on the ground. You are tripping balls, and you couldn’t be happier.

“At least you can hold your own when I start dishing out the sass. That little dipshit would just run around bitching and moaning till I was about to lose my mind. Last I saw he was hanging around some creepy juggalo way downtown. Looked like bad news.”

“You did not just say your ex is hooking up with a juggalo.” You let out a breathy wheeze as you picture an overgrown clown-man getting jiggy with it.

“Fucking ridiculous, right? I bet he honks like a bike horn when you grab his ass.”

“Ohh, Karkat," You moan in an Oscar-worthy semblance of a horny stoner clown, "That’s so damn good....mmm....honk fucking honk.” Terezi joins in your raucous laughter, and soon you’re both in stitches. The fiasco at the bar seems like a distant memory, and with your eyes squeezed shut and watering from the extent of your hilarity and the fragments of Bro’s shades lost in the darkness of Terezi’s apartment, it’s hard to rationalize why you had gotten close to losing your cool in the first place.

You both eventually calm down and you pull out your phone to check the time. 1:15 AM....not too shabby.

“Damn, I’d better get back. It’s a long, treacherous journey to my apartment. Between the eight feet of hallway and all one lock on my door, I’ve got pretty much no chance of survival.”

Terezi giggles and leaves the long-gone bowl on the coffee table. The light from the hallway’s already starting to fuck your retinas as you stand and stretch, and you remind yourself to buy a pair of ironic replacement shades the first chance you get. Terezi, of course, picks that exact moment to swipe the plastic shards off the couch and dump them into your hands, curling your own fingers around them with a smile. “If you make it back alive, I really recommend going red in the shade department. They’ll make you at least a thousand times cooler.”

“You know, I have been considering going through a ‘douche who dresses like he’s colorblind’ phase.”

Terezi lets it slide with a laugh and guides you towards the door. “Swing by whenever you need to talk, Coolkid.”

“Thanks, TZ.” You ruffle her hair into a spiky disarray to show her you meant it and because it pisses her off like nobody’s business, and she surprises you by putting up with it. You’re not sure if it’s the weed or if Terezi’s a better friend than you’d thought. Maybe it’s both, maybe it’s neither. You’re a little too stoned yourself to be getting into this kind of existential shit.

Against all odds, you make it next door in one piece, trusting your luck and dexterity to make it to the fridge and pull out a six-pack from behind your stack of swords before swinging into your desk chair. You eye the mixing decks hooked up to your computer for a hot minute but decide against it; you’ve gone far enough down from the high that anything you mix now will only be about 80% as fucking sweet as it could be. Instead, you roam the internet for an hour or two, checking on your blog, hitting up some groupies on your DJ page. You’ve run through a generous number of beers and pretty much every ironically uninteresting website you can think of before you end up scrolling through your applications in a fit of boredom. Nothing interesting pops up for a good while, and you’re close to calling it quits and getting some beauty sleep when your blurred gaze hones in on a name you haven’t seen in close to a decade.

Pesterchum. You snort derisively as you remember the day you’d downloaded it, explaining in full the complex seven-tiered cake of irony behind the act to your doubtful Bro. You double click the outdated logo out of curiosity, half-expecting an app that old to combust on your bitching top-of-the-line Macbook.

Much to your surprise, it still works. You sip your beer as you review your chumhandle. TurntechGodhead. That sure brings a lot of shit back.

You only have three chums with pending pesterlogs. Most of the messages are pretty outdated queries about where he is, what’s been happening, why he hasn’t talked to any of them in weeks. The occasional ‘happy birthday, you aloof piece of shit’. Most of them gave up after enough time, but one barrels on long after the others called it quits. You scroll back up and get comfortable enough for a drunken trip down memory lane.

\-- gardenGnostic [GG] started pestering turntechGodhead [TG] \--

GG: dave!!!!!!  
GG: i havent heard from you in ages, are you okay??  
GG: D:  
GG: helloooooooo??  
GG: rose said she heard something about your bro, were all really worried!!

You scroll through much of the same, taking a sip at your beer. You’ve had more than enough bro talk for the day. After a few miles of question marks, Jade gives up on the Dave hunt and starts rambling like she’s writing in her personal diary. Your scrolling finger drops down a few gears.

GG: ever since john and rose started high school i havent really heard from them either D:  
GG: i guess i can see why, school keeps me pretty busy too!!  
GG: our science clubs doing really well this year, weve won a few competitions already!!  
GG: i think its because we have so many experts on different subjects  
GG: one guy kind of reminds me of you because hes always in the biology room messing with a jar of something in formaldehyde  
GG: hes probably one of the smartest people i know!!  
GG: i cover most of the botany stuff since im the only one who really knows anything about botany, but i can hold my own pretty damn well in physics and chemistry too!  
GG: if we end up getting to internationals, i might be close enough to visit!!  
GG: if youre still in texas, that is...  
GG: maybe ill come visit even if our club doesnt make it  
GG: youll have to teach me how to be super cool like you first though! lol

You grin as you skim through more details of new friends and adventures with that dog of hers — it must have some kind of superhuman lifespan — until an absolute clusterfuck of punctuation catches your eye.

GG: DAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
GG: i have the best news, you wont believe it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
GG: i got into a physics program at columbia, im only going to be a few hours away from you!!!!!!!!!!!  
GG: i still havent really managed to get in touch with anyone yet but...  
GG: were really doing this  
GG: were  
GG: MAKING IT HAPPEN!!!!!!!!  
GG: :D

You blink a few times at the text, your eyes caught on the word ‘Columbia’. You look up the university’s mailing address, just to be sure. Google Maps gives you a clean ten minutes for a one-way trip. All this time, Jade’s been right under your nose.

You check the time: 3:26 AM. Not the best time for a heartfelt reunion with an old pal. You put the finishing touches on the empty beer can model of the pyramids of Giza by your feet and shuck off your clothes, too drunk and worn out to do anything else before you throw yourself at your bed. You’ve ascertained the perfect launch angle from your chair when you stop in your tracks, pawing the table to spin yourself back in front of your computer. An unfamiliar lightness dances through your stomach as you type out a few quick lines before passing out on top of your sheets in your underwear.

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] started pestering gardenGnostic [GG]\--

TG: hey jade  
TG: long time no see  
TG: kind of a funny story relaeyy  
TG: *raely  
TG: funny in an o shit my bro died and the system had pretty shitty wifi so i basically lost touch with yall for ten years til i got drunk one time and went on pesterchum kind of way  
TG: but im about to drop the sickest coidneicence youve ever seen  
TG: *condecicnece  
TG: **coincidence FUCK  
TG: if this coeanicdence was a beat itd be the holy grail of all beats  
TG: knights crowned by none other than tupac the swagginheart would ride on horseback for thousans of miles just for the chance to drop a rhyme to this most illest of beasts  
TG: *beast  
TG: **beats  
TG: hoping they would spit with enough bravery and valiance to be chosen as the new ruler of the spoken word  
TG: are you reyady jade  
TG: *readyea  
TG: *ready  
TG: are you physically and emotionally prepared for this hells sweet coincidence  
TG: right now at apporwximately 3:32 AM eastern fuckin time  
TG: we are lityerlayly  
TG: *lilteraly goddammit  
TG: ten minutes away from each other  
TG: weve been ten minteuses away for fuckin years  
TG: which is basiclaly the most ridiculous shit ive ever heard  
TG: but dont worry you can stop crying yourself to sleep over how much cooler youd be if i was still around  
TG: because you know we're about to fucking  
TG: MAKE IT HAPEN

\-- turntechGodhead  [TG] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG]\--


	2. Promises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all can sit down now, because I am definitely the real Slim Shady.
> 
> Major props to [InkWellHero](/users/inkwellhero) for beta reading!

The first time your cell phone goes off, you’re still eight miles deep into dreamworld, puncturing the iron-gilded skull of a fiery colossus with a legendary katana forged in the lava of an active volcano. No cinematic expenses are spared on your mad sweet dreams.  
  
On the second trill, you manage to wrap your head around the fact that you are not in fact Lord Dave, exquisitely dressed master swordsman and savior of distressed damsels all across the war-stricken Land of Hella Awesome Caves, but simply Dave Strider, hungover dude lying in your underwear and a pretty sicknasty puddle of your own drool. You imagine with remorse that Lord Dave would be able to handle your headache a hell of a lot better than you are right now.  
  
Your phone gets a little too excited from its third alert and starts vibrating wildly on your desk, resonating against the inside of your skull as you hit full consciousness with a tired groan. A few seconds of blind rolling and a sensual rubdown of your desk earns you your cell phone, which buzzes yet again as you unlock the home screen with a sigh. Most of the notifications are from your manager. The little chicken shit would send eight thousand texts in a row to make sure you couldn’t ignore it.  
  
You make the executive decision to blow him off anyway and delete the moron's text history for good measure, leaving only a private message on one of your linked chat clients to attend to. Your surprised smile turns into a grimace as blood rushes to your head with a painful throb.

GG: DAVE!?!?!?!???!?  
GG: i dont even know what to say, this is totally crazy!!!  
GG: well, i can probably still yell at you for not getting in touch with me until now :p  
GG: you barely made it too, im leaving for an internship in a couple months!  
GG: thats not really the issue though, thats that youre here!!!!!!! and im here!!!  
GG: lets meet really soon  
GG: maybe today, even?  
GG: im just so excited right now, i never thought id hear from you again!!

She hasn't changed a bit, you note with a dry chuckle. Still wagging her tail like an overexcited puppy. You consider checking your calendar before you reply, but end up deciding that you don't really give a shit.

TG: well fuck can you really blame a guy for wanting to make a cool reentrance?  
TG: nothing says cool like absconding without a word only to pop up outside your window like a sociopathic longterm stalker  
TG: waiting for you to curl up alone with a movie and a glass of wine for the night before springing out of nowhere with a dagger full of nostalgia  
TG: muffle your screams with some well placed adolescent anecdotes  
TG: just straight up smother you with friendship

Your hands freeze on the keys as you see that Jade’s typing back.

GG: lol, you really havent changed one bit!!  
GG: still cool as ever :)  
GG: are you free today? im dying to see you!!  
TG: i dunno harley  
TG: im a busy man these days  
TG: between nursing my hangover and maybe ordering a pizza sometime today i really dont know how i could possibly fit you in  
GG: no excuses, buster! not even ironic ones!!  
GG: theres a great cafe on cornelia street, want to meet there around 230?  
TG: aw jade i cant show up in that lame joint  
TG: all the burnout coffee bloggers will get one look at my internet famous persona and just fall to the ground in pious respect  
TG: itll cause a scene  
TG: therell be upturned macbooks and spilled cappuccinos everywhere  
GG: pleeeeaaaaase? one of my old flatmates works there and i promised id stop by and watch their open mic show  
TG: oh my fucking god  
TG: i cant stand to witness that kind of artistic depravity  
GG: pleeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase??  
TG:  god damn harley  
TG: youre lucky i have all this absent friend guilt bottled up or id have paid off your friend support checks and booked it for another 20 years  
TG: ill be at fucking cornelia st  
GG: :D  
GG: thanks dave, youre the best!!!!!!!!  
GG: ill be wearing a green scarf  
TG: ill be the rad dude lying on a chaise of people less talented than me  
GG: lol! ive gotta go, ill see you then!  
GG: im so crazy excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You wait for Jade's chumhandle to go offline before tossing your phone next to your pillow, feeling more or less prepared to make the dangerous trek to your bathroom. Your fingers ghost over your shades' usual resting place on your nightstand, and you remember with an unpleasant lurch in your stomach that you still don't have any awesome eyewear to call your own. You never used to wear your shades during your morning routine, but you still feel a little naked staring straight into your own eyes as you pop some painkillers over your sink. No, finding a replacement pair was definitely the day's priority. After meeting your childhood friend for the first time, of course.

With only an hour or two until your shitty cafe date with Jade, you don't really have time to find the second-raddest pair of shades in the world on the internet as you'd previously planned, but you're pretty sure there's a place a few blocks down that might have something passable. You slip your wallet full of dirty smuppet money into your pocket and make it down the first steps outside your door when you hear your name behind you and turn.

"Think fast!"

Some kind of black projectile rams you square in the chest, making you flinch more out of surprise than pain as you fumble to catch it on the rebound. You vaguely register that you're holding a pair of shitty hipster wayfarers, but you're mostly staring open-mouthed at the blind girl who just scored a bullseye from twenty feet away.

"You've been faking all this time, haven't you? God damnit, Terezi, that shit's inconsiderate." She answers from her door frame with a smug grin.

"I was hoping to catch you before you went shades-hunting; we both know there’s no way you’ll find a pair cool enough to follow your bro’s in this part of town. One of my sister's asshole friends left these behind the last time they were here, and I figure they're a little more your style than mine."

You turn the shades around in your hands, holding them above your head to make sure the Ray-Ban logo's authentic. Then again, having a knockoff pair might have made them suitably ironic; these were just lame as fuck.

“I’m pretty offended that you think I want to look like a pretentious college whore, but I guess these’ll do till I get my hands on some quality eyewear.”

“Yeah yeah, you’re welcome!” She throws up a hand as she disappears back into her apartment, leaving you to get acquainted with your new shades in the stairwell. You give them a disapproving look in your hands before you hesitantly slip them on. The sudden drop in brightness is a definite improvement, but you can’t deny that they feel weird on your face, the new corners catching your fingers by surprise as they run along the edges of the frame. You’ll give them a go just for the hell of it, but you’re going to need to find a _real_ replacement pair pretty soon.

For once in your life, you’re grateful for the New York windchill that clears out your muddled head as you wander through the street, people-watching without reservation now that you’ve got your ocular one-way mirror back. You’re kind of regretting not bringing your camera along now that you have jack shit to do when your stomach grumbles. 1:34 PM; it’s been a good eighteen hours since your last meal. You look up at the next intersection to orient yourself and snort at the cosmic irony plastered across the street sign over your head:

Cornelia Street.

If life’s going to hand you a bunch of douchebag hipster lemons, you might as well make some douchebag hipster lemonade, right? 

The cafe looks like any other joint in West Village, greeting you with a gaudy striped awning and some guys rocking the cultured hobo look over a couple of sandwiches at a streetside table. You’re surprised at how big — and dark, but that might just be that your new shades are a little heavier duty — it is on the inside, eyeing the fully furnished stage dominating half the restaurant while you place an order and snag a two-person table by the window. The whole place reeks of ganja and English majors with disappointed parents, but you’ve seen worse.

You covertly slip on your jacket hood as an extra precaution, but your stealthy entrance, on top your brand-spanking-new shitshades, has pretty much guaranteed you anonymity. You take care of some business matters on your cell phone as a waiter brings out your lunch, glancing up every now and then at some techies start prepping the stage with a microphone and some acoustic equipment. A beefy guy in an apron drops a sandwich board bearing the phrase ‘open mic’ in bold handwriting and a badly replicated cat meme outside the front door, and within a matter of minutes the place starts filling in. You prop your feet up on the chair across from you like an asshole when a guy standing by his friends’ table starts eyeing it and take to an involved game of tetris as the store owner starts gushing about how much he appreciates the turnout.

Thirty more minutes till Jade’s supposed to show up...boy, did you fuck yourself good and raw.

Most of the acts are depraved poetry readings and terrible acoustic covers that you only notice because the sound is dragging your migraine back from the depths of oblivion. Might as well order a couple coffees and take this shit like a man.

You’re halfway through your medal of honor acceptance speech for resisting the urge to run as fast as your legs will carry you when you notice an uptake in chatter across the room. You look up with a bored sigh and catch the owner on stage again.

“Thanks to everyone for a great first set!” Jesus H. Christ, there are _multiple sets_. “While we switch up a few gears, I thought we’d try out something a little new.” It might just be you, but his smile looks a little malicious as somebody flips on a spotlight beside him, probably about to blind some poor fuck sitting up front. “This’ll need some cooperation from our audience, ‘course. Lucky winner of the spotlight lottery gets a shot to wow us all and win free coffee for two!” Wow, six dollars worth of free coffee. What a fucking saint. The bearded homeless dude sitting on the edge of the stage starts pounding out a drumroll on his bongos, and you’re busy designating yourself a purple heart on top of your medal of honor when you look up and realize you’re the poor fuck blinded by the spotlight. It is you.

“I think we have a winner!” You grit your teeth in annoyance, but the way you’re squinting in the light makes it look like an unfortunately passable smile.

“What’s your name, son?” Your eyes flicker towards the door; if you move fast enough, they wouldn’t have time to try and stop you. Still, you’ve got an image to maintain. You stand up and lean against the edge of your table, hands in your pockets.

“Strider.” The owner blinks a few times but shakes it off with a hearty laugh.

“Well, come on up!” You close your eyes behind your shades for a few exasperated seconds before dragging yourself towards the stage, the audience applauding the fact that they’re not the ones getting martyred. They want a show, they’ll get a fucking show.

“Sup. Gimme a beat.” You pull the mic out of its stand in a practiced motion, already several steps into your plan of attack as the Bob Marley cosplayer starts pounding out a beat on his shitty ethnic drums. It sure as hell isn’t what you’re used to, but you can definitely make it work. You let him grind out a few measures on his own, nodding your head in begrudging solidarity before you start dropping the truth:

_I was seven years old when my bro looked at me_  
 _through those shitty shades and said kid, you gotta grow up_  
 _you gotta learn to fuckin strife_  
 _whupped my ass within an inch of my motherfuckin life_  
 _I did what any kid would do: I cried like a bitch_  
 _The douche picked me up and laughed_  
 _‘you gonna fight back with an attitude like that?’_  
 _hell yeah I’m gonna fight back_  
 _sliced through his shit, through his shirt, through his stupid facade_  
 _nothin on the roof but sweat and blood, no tears allowed, but_  
 _I was allowed to go for the face and the nads, for the best friend he ever had_  
 _the lesson was damn clear, that this weren’t no game, son_  
 _it’s the world that’s gotta be won_  
 _you better fly the motherfucking coop, son_  
 _I’m giving you the wax, now make some motherfuckin wings, son_

You can’t tell if Captain Instagram’s actually upping the tempo or if you’re just getting that deep into the zone, but soon your eyes are nearly shut behind your shades and your words are pouring out of your mouth of their own accord.

_just like that, when I was thirteen he was motherfucking done_  
 _red apples, red blood_  
 _shit falls to the ground with a hella fucking deep thud_  
 _his chest is endgame with three bullets and the end of his blade, I wasn’t swayed_  
 _some dick’s got a debt to be repaid_  
 _just like the rest you think I’m spinning lies? that it’s too bad to be true?_  
 _that's what they said in the feds, in the fams, in the motherfucking sticks_  
 _no way you fought with a katana, no way some dude stabbed your bro's shit_  
 _they all say I’m makin shit up, gotta man up_  
 _what kinda man doesn’t get fucked up by a holdup?_  
 _but you know I’m gonna own up to all the shit that don’t add up_  
 _gotta prove I’ve grown up so my haters shut the fuck up_  
 _throw what you want at me, think I can’t take it?_  
 _took a sword through my shoulder, 40 homespun stitches and I made it_  
 _so next time you hear word that I’m all bark and no bite_  
 _remember when I told you shits how I learned how to strife._

You let the mic drop out of your opened palm in the most melodramatic display you can muster, the whine of the feedback and your heavy thuds against the wooden stage the only noise in the room for a few seconds. Right on time, the crowd explodes...into an uproar of snaps.  
  
You decide that you’ve never hated an establishment so much in your entire life.  
  
It’s harder to get back to your table now that the spotlight isn’t burning a path into the ground for you, but you manage to slowly shove your way through. You can see your chair yearning for your plush rump when something catches on your arm and pulls you to a stop. You wheel around, seriously considering the ramifications of mass murder before you suddenly find yourself wrenched into a faceful of lime green fabric.  
  
“Hi Dave!” The bend in your neck is approaching 90 degrees as the owner of the bright voice over your head maintains a death grip on your shoulders. You laugh into Jade’s scarf and give her a hearty pat on the back.  
  
“Sup, Harley.” She gives your airway one last friendly squeeze before she lets you go, practically beaming with excitement.    
  
“Nothin’ much, my bro from another mo’! You’re so much taller than I’d thought! And skinnier, too,” She chides with a laugh and a poke in the stomach. Her touch makes you jump, which you cover with a grin.  
  
“I’ve gotta say, I’m pretty surprised you’re not an overweight 50-year-old pedophile.”  
  
She’s a good head shorter than you and tanner than most New Yorkers you’ve seen, her eyes a deep green that burn through her nerdy glasses even in the dim light. You’re no expert, but you’d guess she’s sporting some womanly curves under her winter coat. Not exactly the 12 year old Jade you’d always pictured and definitely no dirty internet predator, but not bad on the eyes either.  
  
She laughs at your snide remark, hard enough that she covers her mouth with a hand.  
  
“How do you know I’m not just wearing a Jade suit, and I’m actually some gigantic sumo wrestler that wants your cool booty?”  
  
This time you crack up, ducking your head as you feel yourself bust out the goofy smile you usually keep on reserve for potventures with Terezi.  
  
“God Harley, you’re a disaster. You’re lucky I found out you were here when I did, or else you would have just plummeted to dork bottom without even knowing it.” A crowd of people start pushing for the door and you pull Jade out of the way, guiding her down the home stretch to your table while you’re at it. She gives you a scowl as you pull a chair out for her.  
  
“Don’t think I’ve gotten over being mad at you. You’ve been in New York how long now?” It takes you a moment to remember as you slide into your own seat. It feels like you just turned eighteen a moment ago, but every day before that still drags on for centuries.  
  
“It’s been a couple years, I guess. ‘Bout as long as you’ve been here.”  
  
“See what I’m saying?” She plants her elbow on the table and throws an accusatory finger in your face. “Do you know, I called every Dave, every Strider, and every Dave fucking Strider in the entire state of Texas?”  
  
“Well no wonder you didn’t find me, my middle name isn’t ‘fucking’.”  
  
Jade’s angry front crumbles as she breaks into a laugh. “What brought you out here, anyway?”  
  
“Oh, you know how shit goes.” You take a long sip of your cold, watered-down coffee, but even after you choke down all the dregs Jade’s still staring straight through your shades and into your goddamn soul. Come on Strider, you’ve done this at least a hundred times by now, no need to act like you’re hiding a body under the table.  
  
“There isn’t a cute story or anything, if that’s what you’re looking for. I had a bank account full of nasty smuppet revenue and 49 states that weren’t Texas, so I just figured, ‘why the hell not?’ and booked it. I brought my ill beats and my turntables and got myself a wholesome glowstick-fueled livelihood, and that pretty much brings you up to speed on the life and times of one D. Strider.”  
  
Jade’s face lights up even more, and you’re starting to think you’ve found an answer to the national energy crisis. “You DJ!? Holy shit, that’s so cool!”  
  
“Yeah, I’m kind of a big deal.” You mirror Jade’s grin. “Your turn at the stand, Harley. Keep in mind you are under oath to spare no gritty detail.”  
  
“Hmm...” She strokes an imaginary beard in the single dorkiest action you’ve ever seen in your life while she thinks of where to start. “Well, I already told you on Pesterchum how I got here; I got my undergrad degree in physics last spring, and since then I’ve been doing some independent research in a particle quantum mechanics lab on campus. New York’s been great! I think I probably like it as much as I like home. It was sad to leave old Bec behind...we Skype every other night, though, so it’s like he’s still here!”  
  
You picture Jade talking for hours on end to a dog on a computer screen and let out a chuckle just because that’s such a _Jade_ thing to do. She notices and swats your hand, leaving a surprisingly persistent sting.  
  
“It’s not funny! He’s very insightful!”  
  
“I’m sure he’s got some great theories on the theoretical existence of whatever you're hiding in your fist. Schrodinger’s cat’s got nothing on Becquerel’s dog treat.” You brace for impact but she just snorts and shakes her head.  
  
“You seen Egbert and Lalonde?” You finally ask.  
  
“Yep! I met them both in about a year of getting to New York.” You can't help but be a little surprised at the news. Then again, if her persistent harassment was enough to drag _you_ out of Pesterchum limbo, the other two corners of your little friend square must have been easy work.  
  
“Rose is in Pennsylvania, I think she’s training to be a psychiatrist,” Jade says. “Not a big surprise there, she was always going on about that creepy Freudian stuff even when we were little!” Boy howdy, did you remember those fun conversations. “Last I heard John was out west, trying to make it big as a composer. Some of his stuff’s up on Myspace, it’s pretty good!” John would be using the technology of pedophiles trapped in 2007..it’s almost scary how little any of them have changed.  
  
“Level with me here, Jade; how long’s Egbert been digging for my body?” You ask the question as a joke, but Jade’s smile fades away real fast.  
  
“Actually, they’re still pretty worried about you. We were all waiting for you to get online that day to wish you a happy birthday, and then you just...never showed. Ever. No goodbye, no explanation, no proof that you were even okay! Then when Rose found that horrible article in a Houston paper the next day, we thought something really bad had happened!” Her voice drops off, and you’re starting to feel like the biggest piece of shit the world has ever known.  
  
“For a while I told myself you were just mad about something stupid, or busy with whatever happened, mystery that it was. I tried to pester you every couple days, just on the off-hand chance you’d suddenly reappear and I could stop worrying about it. You even had your designated spot on my to-do list.” She drops her hand palm-up on the table so you can see the dense tattoo of reminders scribbled across her arm. It doesn’t take you long to spot a ‘pester Dave!’ in faded red ink, right at the topmost crease of her wrist. “I’d stopped expecting a reply after a couple of months, but by then it was pretty much a bad habit. When I woke up and saw your message this morning, I thought I was still dreaming!” She smiles, but not enough to ease the bitter taste in your mouth.  
  
All those years under the feds writing sad poetry by candlelight about how alone you were, and in the end you were the one who abandoned the people who gave a shit about you. Ace work, Strider.  
  
“Shit, Harley,” You say, because you don’t really know what else to say. You’re considering stumbling your way through an unironically heartfelt apology when Jade laughs and shakes her head.  
  
“Look at me, pulling a Debbie Downer at our first meeting! Have you seen that SNL sketch? That show’s hilarious, I’m so mad I hadn’t heard about it till I got here!” You have in fact seen that sketch and found the cast’s failure to keep a straight face positively deplorable, but that’s not really your primary focus at the moment.    
  
“Jade, look, I didn’t—”  
  
“It’s really okay, Dave.” She pats your clasped hands like Therapist #3 but it’s actually genuine, and you make the emotionally mature decision to sit there like a moron. “I guess we both have a couple skeletons hanging out in our closets, but we’ve got plenty of time to deal with that. The sicknasty adventures of Dave and Jade have just begun!”    
  
Being the suppression addict you are, you shoot up some grade-A misplaced ironic humor and let the denial high kick in.  
  
“New York better look out, because Sweet Dave and Hella Jade are about to make some shit happen.”  
  
“We warned you about those adventures, New York! We warned you, bro!” You’re laughing at the god-awful comics you haven’t thought about in nine years and at Jade’s ridiculous Hella Jeff voice, and you don’t really feel the need to stop yourself from forgetting the last ten minutes ever happened. You get pretty deep into the Jungian undertones of Geromy’s life story (inspired by the great nutjob Lalonde herself) when Jade’s phone goes off.  
  
“Shit, I’ve gotta get back to the lab,” She groans, and a check of your own phone shows you’ve been sitting on your ass talking for a few more hours than you’d planned yourself.  
  
“Well, if you need a slick manly escort to explain your absence, I’m totally at your service,” You offer with a straight face. Jade laughs and whacks your shoulder as you both stand. This girl is a total fucking S, you just know it.  
  
“I appreciate it, but I think I’ll make it! It was really, really great to see you, Dave.” She gives you this giant toothy grin, and you feel like a deer caught in some freakishly bright green headlights.  
  
“Right back atcha, Harley,” You manage to spit out as you toss up a nonchalant hand. Jade waves back and gets halfway out the door when she turns back like she forgot something. You glance at your table to check, and suddenly Jade’s reached the absolute summit of your grill.  
  
“Can I help you?” You coolly ask after jumping out of your goddamn skin.  
  
“Repeat after me,” She says with an expression so serious you’d swear she’s being ironic. “I, Dave Strider.”  
  
“I, Dave Most Def Illest of the Villest Strider.” You grin despite Jade’s dagger eyes.  
  
“Do solemnly swear.”  
  
“Do solemnly swear,” You parrot back.  
  
“To never ever ever disappear on Jade Harley for as long as I still live, so help me God.”  
  
You take a few seconds to swallow down the nasty guilt spider crawling around in the back of your throat. You hold up both hands, proof of no fingers crossed.  
  
“To never ever ever disappear on Jade Harley for as long as I still live, so help me God.”  
  
Jade nods like you just took care of some seriously pending administrative business and takes her leave again.  
  
“We’re hanging out again soon, keep an eye on Pesterchum!” She calls out over her shoulder.  
  
“You got it,” You say to the door already swinging shut.


	3. Constant Conversations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allow me to indulge in an apt, if painfully overused, metaphor: think of my story as a roller coaster. The last two chapters were your lazy ride up, getting you acquainted to your car, giving you some free time to make some (deeply appreciated) comments about how nice the view is. This right here, my lovely readers, is the top of the ramp. This is that moment when you're so high up you're getting a little slaphappy from the thin air and you keep waiting for the car to start rolling again but fuck, it just won't drop! I won't tell you how deep the rabbit hole's about to go, but if I were you I'd enjoy the view while I still can.
> 
> ...Damn, I mixed metaphors. Happy 2013, and as always, enjoy!

“No fucking way I’m going there,” You’d said when Jade had suggested it on pesterchum.  
  
“This is a terrible idea and I’m not down,” You’d said when she’d called to set a time to meet.  
  
“There is no way in hell you can make me go through with this,” You’d said as you paid for your rental gear.  
  
“This is absolute horseshit and I’m not moving from this spot,” You say as you stand on the edge of an ice rink in skates a half size too small that are already giving your ankles hell. Jade turns a deaf ear to your persistent refusal, pulling you forward by a limp arm. You stubbornly lock your knees as she struggles to gain momentum under your added weight.

“What’s so bad about ice skating? You skateboard, don’t you? It’s like the same freaking thing!” You’re not sure if you’re impressed or annoyed by how strongly she’s sticking to her guns.  
  
“Skateboarding is totally different,” You explain as you turn your feet to the side, forcing Jade to drag you forward against the will of your screeching blades. “Skateboarding is an age-old art form that trains the mind and body to become one with the concrete we shred. Ice skating, on the other hand, is a wanna-be sport for pansies that offers nothing to the soul but a stupid trip around a circle and a botched date with the cold, unforgiving bitch known to the layman as frozen ice.”  
  
“Have you ever even _tried_ ice skating?” Bless Harley’s poor misguided heart, she’s really not going to let this shit go.  
  
“I’m never going to try it, because I already know it sucks hairy ass.” You bust out full evasive measures and sink to your knees, easing yourself face-down onto the ice until Jade’s left scrambling to get enough traction on her skates to drag your lifeless body out of the way of oncoming traffic.  
  
“Dave, come on, you’re going to get run over,” Jade pleads over your ear. Even with the five feet and some change change between you and her face, you can feel her laugh coming on. Stay strong, Strider, you’ve almost won.  
  
“ _I SHALL NOT BE MOVED_ ,” You roar, loud enough that a few kids zipping by stumble in surprise.  
  
“You’re causing a scene!” She giggles as you make yourself even more of an obstacle by swinging your limbs back and forth like you’re trying to make a snow angel. “Okay, okay, okay; one lap, and we can sit around and make fun of people falling on their asses for as long as you want.”  
  
“You drive a hard bargain, Harley. I’ll do it, but remember that you owe me.” You offer the smuggest grin you can muster as you hoist yourself back onto your feet, feeling a little bit like a stroke victim as you try to slap some feeling into the frozen half of your face.  
  
“Jeez, you handled that super maturely.” She punches you in the shoulder for being an ass, which you were pretty much expecting anyway.  
  
“Don’t fight it, you know you love my boyish charm,” You retort as Jade pushes you forward.  
  
“A cool guy like you’s gotta be a huge ladies’ man, huh Dave?” She gives you a stage wink as she files into place next to you, leaning into her steps as she picks up speed. You casually shrug as you meander along the edge of the rink.  
  
“It used to be a struggle to keep ‘em off, but now I just hold my arms up and let them take me.” You spin around and demonstrate, earning another fit of laughter from Jade.  
  
“Do you have a _girlfriend_?” She drags out the word like you’re both still twelve years old, which makes you laugh.  
  
“Nah, I’m more of a ‘hit it and quit it’ kinda dude. Not everybody has what it takes to handle the big D,” You say with deep regret. “Probably for the better, considering how much property damage pissed off women cause me. The last one took my bro’s shades out of commission.”  
  
Jade wheels around and stares hard at your face. “So those aren’t the real deal?”  
  
“These shitters?” You scoff. “They’re the unrealest deal you ever saw in your life. These are a lightly used set of wheels with a sick paint job that a sketchy dude in an orange suit tries to sell you on a lot right off the highway for two hundred bucks, except he leaves out the CarFax report about the body the cops found in the trunk. That unreal.”  
  
“That’s pretty damn unreal,” Jade agrees with a laugh. “Can I see them?”  
  
You’ve made it all the way across the rink, so the only eyes on you are painted on the stupid ads lining the guard rails. It’s just Jade, why the hell not.  
  
“Handle with care, unreal shitters or not,” You warn as you disrobe your eyes and take an intense interest in a scarred pattern in the ice by your feet. A few seconds go by with no real progress on Jade taking your goddamn shades, so you wave your hand around for attention and chance a look up.  
  
Jade’s bent into some uncomfortable L-shape like she was medically inspecting the underside of your chin, but she quickly straightens up with an unusually unreadable expression on her face. You’re starting to regret putting all that effort into getting pants on this morning for how exposed you feel under her batshit laser stare.  
  
“Your eyes...” She tilts her head and propels herself closer like she just discovered a rare new species of Dave. You automatically start cycling through your most common excuses: it’s a weird genetic thing; they’re just ironic color contacts—  
  
“They’re really pretty!” You narrowly stop yourself from blinking in surprise, what with how ass-naked your face still is, and manage to come out with a barely noticeable twitch of your eyebrows.  
  
“Damn right I’m pretty.” You mirror Jade’s grin as a constricting pressure on your lungs eases away.

 

* * *

“Where the hell did you go?”  
  
“Don’t worry about it. Go do whatever the objective is.”  
  
You lean forward on your couch, readjusting your grip on your Xbox controller before you start angling for the zombies piling up under your crosshairs. You hadn’t really pinned Jade as a Left 4 Dead kind of girl, but you were pretty sure something in your living room was going to get smashed to pieces if either of you got hit by another blue shell in Mariokart, so maybe this was a favorable, if unexpected, turn of events.    
  
“Harley, I’m not about to leave you on your own in this mutant-infested wasteland. Stop dicking around and meet me at the checkpoint.”  
  
“I’ve got it under control, Dave! Just keep moving.”  
  
You drop a heaving sigh as you melee your way out of a flesh-eating grandma’s grip. “There’s pretty much one rule to surviving the zombie apocalypse, and that’s to not, under any fucking circumstances, split up.”  
  
“Jesus, Dave, you’re acting like I’ve never played this before.”  
  
“You’ve...” Your voice falters as your next three targets’ heads explode in quick succession with your finger still on the trigger. “Jade, are you _sniping_ these zombies?”  
  
“Surprise!” Her cackle sounds a little sadistic next to your ear.  
  
“So you can’t watch a terrible Owen Wilson flick without crying your eyes out, but an everyday game controller turns you into a cold-blooded killer. You’re a real goddamn enigma, Harley.”  
  
“Hey!” She pauses to switch to a shotgun and make her way through your trail of distended corpses. “Nobody told me the dog died at the end of _Marley and Me_! You can’t tell me that wasn’t depressing.”  
  
“Still not as depressing as that fuckface’s poor excuse for acting,” You mutter with vindication as you nail your latest victim right in the balls. You can finally see Jade’s name hovering over her character at the edge of your screen, so you backtrack to give her some cover.  
  
“ _Reunited and it feels so go-ood_ ,” You sing in an over-the-top falsetto as you take out the one undead straggler between your team and the muscled Hulk Hogan replica representing Jade. She laughs and nudges you with her shoulder as she takes point.  
  
“Forget DJing, you should start up an R&B career,” She suggests with a snort as she starts picking off the next wave of enemies. You take the other side of the stage and follow suit, clearing through the murderous hordes with a practiced precision.  
  
“D. Strelly at your motherfucking _service_!” You shout in victory as you finally take down a particularly resilient zombie. You engage Jade in an intricate seven-part brofist (that, you might add, it took a solid twenty-five minutes and a lot of derisive sighing for her to successfully master) as you reach your checkpoint and rack up a sweet time bonus. The next level finally loads in the foyer of a pitch-black two story house.  
  
“Aw shit,” You both moan at once, which makes you grin. “Good to know I’m not the only one who hates this place.”  
  
“Agh, no matter how many times I do this part, it’s always so creepy!”  
  
“Because the rest of the world being overrun with mindless, bloodthirsty humanoids was a walk in the fucking park.”  
  
“Sh-shush shush!” Too scared to pull a hand off her controller, Jade ends up waving a foot at you. “If we’re going to get through this alive, we need to focus.”  
  
“Lead the way, Lieutenant Harley.”  
  
She makes a strangled noise that makes it pretty apparent that she does not want to lead the way as she inches forward with the light on her gun. You’re starting to think shutting up was a bad idea, since all you’re really focusing on right now is the stillness of the house and the scary-ass music in the background.  
  
“It’s quiet,” Jade notes in a hushed voice, “ _Too_ quiet...”  
  
You’re all about three-quarters through the first hallway when the floor gives out under your feet, dropping you into an absolute clusterfuck of lightning-fast zombies. You fall back on your survival instincts and let out a blood-curdling screech as you button mash for dear life. Jade’s dropping an increasingly frantic stream of swear words as both your health bars nosedive. Your character’s begging for mercy under three zombies before you decide you’ve had enough of this bullshit and cut to the pause menu.  
  
“Fuck. This. Game.” You push each button to exit on time with your words for emphasis, your hands still trembling from the scare. Jade’s pretty silent until you turn and notice her stifling her laughter in the crook of her arm.  
  
“The hell’s so funny?”  
  
It takes her a few seconds to compose herself enough to answer, and you start to wonder if she’s having some kind of hysterical episode. “It’s just,” She finally wheezes out, “You scream...like a little girl!”

 

* * *

“Okay, set the dial to P.”  
  
“...What dial?”  
  
“The giant one right under your finger. C’mon Harley, this isn’t rocket science. And you can fucking _do_ rocket science.”  
  
You’re sitting on a park bench, watching Jade operate your digital camera with the same twisted fascination you’d give an eight-car pileup on the interstate. How someone with a degree in atomic physics can be foiled by a hunk of plastic with no more than eight buttons on it is utterly beyond your comprehension.  
  
“Congrats. Now, it’s pretty bright out today, so you don’t want your ISO up too high.”  
  
“My _what_?” Jade’s looking at you with bewildered eyes like you just told her she’s holding a high-powered explosive. Given her present aptitude, you actually wouldn’t put it past her to blow the thing to kingdom come.  
  
“I’m going to need you to unclench before we continue this tutorial,” You say in an even voice that’s only meant to be a little patronizing. Jade lets out a frustrated groan and pushes the camera into your lap.  
  
“Can’t you just set it for me? I can point and click just fine,” She whines. You cross your arms and shake a tired head at your incorrigible protege.   
  
“You saw _Spiderman_ , you know the power-responsibility shit. And this fucking gem of a camera is more than your average dose of power, let me tell you.”  
  
Jade sighs at your pep talk as she grudgingly picks up the camera again, holding it an inch away her face as she rereads the labels on all the buttons.  
  
“This one says ISO, so if I push it...” The student has finally begun to absorb her master’s eternal wisdom.  
  
“Right, and then use the dial under your thumb to the left to get it down to around 500.” You can see her chewing up the inside of her cheek as she focuses all her mental faculties on the daunting task of turning a dial three clicks to the left.  
  
“I did it!” She suddenly bursts out, her smile all goofy teeth and dimples. You smirk at her overblown enthusiasm.  
  
“Alright Ansel Adams, you’re ready for your first test shot. Pick a subject, check your frame on the viewfinder, push the shutter button halfway til it’s good and focused, and then ram that fucker like a busty redhead in a low-quality Redtube production.” You blink as you hear the shutter go off halfway through your explicit simile and turn into an eyeful of your own lens.  
  
“You said you were doing a series of candid shots, right?” Click.  
  
“Whoah now, no paparazzi when I’m out on the town.” Jade gets a nice shot of the inside of your palm as you grab your lens and slip off the end of the bench, pulling your photographer apprentice along behind you as you search for a suitable subject. You’re halfway through the finer points of deadpanning in pictures when you hear a frantic screech behind you.  
  
“Wait wait wait!” You whirl around in a big fucking hurry and find Jade hunched on the ground, honing up on a pretty bland looking tree towering over your heads.  
  
“Harley, I’m trying to make you a star here. Instagram shots of half-dead trees are not star material.”  
  
Jade burns a hole through your head with her glare. “This isn’t any old tree, Dave. This is a Shingle Oak! It’s a lot harder to find than other oak species because of its moist soil preference!”  
  
“God damn, I had no idea I was in the presence of arboreal royalty,” You gasp in awed deference. “Take as many shots of this majestic hunk of bark as you can, I want to remember this moment forever. In fact, shit, I want a photo with this marvelous fucker so I have evidence when I tell people this story and they don’t believe their ears.” Jade’s surprised chuckle turns into an all-out peal of laughter when you actually flag a jogger down to man the camera for you.  
  
“Get the whole fucking tree in it,” You instruct your new cameraman as you and Jade lean against the trunk like some stellar coolkids. “I want every single regionally rare leaf in this shot.”  
  
“...You two are like, not even an inch tall,” He warns as he backs further and further away to get the Shingle Oak in all its glory. Jade’s doubled over, waving an arm at you for mercy.  
  
“Come on Harley, pull your shit together. We’ve got history to make.” She nods, wiping her eyes as she recognizes the gravity of the situation, and does her best imitation of the classic Strider photo pose: arms crossed like a tough motherfucker, one foot bent over the other at the ankle to keep it classy, weight rested casually on whatever background object has the good fortune to be in contact with your ass. It’s when you see her face, her cheeks actually turning red from the effort she’s putting in to mash her lips into an indifferent line against the fit of hysterics you know is on the verge of bubbling out of her mouth, that you absolutely lose your shit.  
  
Deadpan be damned; your own howling laughter drowns out the click of the shutter going off.

 

* * *

“ _Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to Jaaaade..._ ”  
  
Between the wind whipping past your ears and the extra thirty feet of distance you picked up by slipping past the garden fence outlining the general borders of Jade’s rooftop party, you’re relieved that you can only barely hear the louder screeches of her college crew picking up their Grammy-worthy rendition of Happy Birthday for the thirtieth time in an hour. The Tweeds, as you’d been lovingly calling them, were plenty amiable throughout the casual downtime before the alcohol came out in droves, but you can only hear about the nuanced complexity of the Mars rover landing so many times before the urge to give a wedgie becomes nigh-uncontrollable.  
  
A deep breath through your nose and a long drag off your beer get you more or less back into working order; something about rooftops always made your lungs shrink up and your shirt collar feel three sizes too small. Therapist #2’s grating voice starts ringing somewhere in the back of your head, but you still can’t really bring yourself to give a shit.  
  
You can’t say you’ve been to a lot of birthday shindigs, but you’d take a gander that this one’s pretty high up when it comes to class. Not only did Jade give you a week’s worth of puppy dog eyes until you grudgingly agreed to show up in “smart casual” attire, but it probably took her a solid couple of hours to coat every stable surface on the roof in a metric fuckton of Christmas lights. The decorations, which were blinding and claustrophobic when you were trapped in their epileptic web, are giving off a comfortable glow now that you’re a safe distance away and mildly intoxicated. You chortle at the irony: ten-thousand-kilowatt-smile Jade would be the one to throw a party bright enough to be seen from space.  
  
“Hey, what’re you doing up here?” Think of the devil and she shall appear.  
  
Said devil is looking unavoidably foxy in a black cocktail number that’s showing a lot more skin than you’re used to seeing on your childhood bosom bud. Bosom, that’s a good boner killer of a word. You concentrate on a gross, saggy, matronly pair of bosoms as you turn to shrug at Jade.  
  
“Figured I’d up my intrigue factor by brooding in a corner for a while. You should probably know that I’m making it my mission to hop on as many of your college friends as possible tonight, maybe even at the same time.”  
  
“I hate to break it to you, but they’re pretty much all taken.”  
  
“You say that like it’s going to slow me down at all.” You raise a sly eyebrow as Jade lets out a laugh over the rim of her wine glass. You wonder how many of those she’s had and how her eyes are still picking up the lights over her party from this far away and remember the bosoms, goddamnit.  
  
“I’ve still got your present,” You suddenly remember as you slip a blank CD case out of your back pocket. “Congrats on the big double-2.”  
  
“Aw Dave, you didn’t have to get me anything!” She’s grinning ear to ear as she surveys the clear jewel case, turning it over in her free hand.  
  
“It’s an EP,” You explain, vaguely regretting your decision to be too cool for labels or gift wrap. “Some of it’s my DJ stuff, a couple of them are raps I wrote. You’d said you wanted to hear some of it, so...”  
  
“Oh my god, I love it, thanks so much Dave!!” She throws her non-wine arm around your waist in a bear hug, the top of her rapidly decomposing bun tickling your chin with the extra inches she’s got on you from her heels.  
  
“Don’t hurt yourself with all that fucking gratitude,” You smirk as she lets you go.  
  
“I’ll make sure to learn all the words, and then we can drop ill beats together!”  
  
“I’m counting the days.” Jade’s ability to make you snicker like a doofus is becoming dangerously impeccable.  
  
“You’ve got yourself a pretty sweet party here, Harley.” You both look up and grin as one of the Tweeds pops the cork off another champagne bottle to rousing cheers.  
  
“I still don’t get why you wouldn’t agree to a joint party when our birthdays are two damn days apart,” She presses, her face scrunched up like she’s about to throw a little-kid-in-a-candy-store fit.  
  
“Birthday parties aren’t really my thing.” Neither are birthdays, you add to yourself as you casually avoid Jade’s stare behind your shades. She purses her lips for a few more seconds but lets it go in the end, knowing a locked box when she sees one.  
  
“Well, I’m really glad you could make it! And I’m glad you finally messaged me back on Pesterchum, and I’m glad we got to know each other in real life. And...”  
  
She chews on her own words for a while, scrunching up her eyes like you’ve got some distasteful ink of a challenging math problem scrawled across your face. You stare right back with a confused expression, half-wondering if she’s gone into some kind of lightweight alcohol stupor.  
  
“And what? I’m not a fan of cliffhangers,” You impatiently bark out. You can only guess your words added the last bit of weight to some divisive scales in Jade’s head, because she suddenly snaps back into herself and yanks you down to her eye level by your ironically pencil-thin pencil tie.  
  
“I’m glad I’m finally doing this.” You’re blinking at olympic speed as you set down your sloshing beer on the ledge behind you and try to get a grip on the situation, but all you can really make of the situation is that Jade’s eyes are dominating your field of vision and her barely parted lips are glossed with champagne and it’s only as you’re tilting your chin and closing the gap between your faces like every dentist in the world dreams of doing to Egbert’s stupid buck teeth that you realize you and your failsafe bosoms are metaphorically fucked.  
  
You lose yourself for a _shoujo_ moment in the taste of sugar and lightly aged alcohol, the air quiet except for the clack of your shades hitting Jade’s glasses as your clammy hands find the small of her back and pull her closer. At the sudden sound of her name from across the rooftop — you knew you had a reason to hate the fucking Tweeds — Jade slowly, unwillingly draws back, her lips pulling into a smile against your mouth before they break away with the lightest smack. You can see her eyelashes skating across her glasses, her frames pushed too far up on her nose by your tactful face mashing, before she takes a step back, your tie falling limp and a little crinkled for the wear against your chest.  
  
“Thanks again for the CD,” She says with a smile that almost looks like a wink in the twilight as she hangs on the edge of the fence. You run a hand through your hair, tugging at the ends near the nape of your neck for lack of anything remotely coherent to say.  
  
God. Fucking. Damn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy, I'm really layering on the chapter notes here...the good news is I've pretty much had the next bit written since square one, so you can expect some rapid-fire updating in the next few days. The bad news is, once that runs out I'm going to be driving my balls into the wall back on campus, which might put a bit of a damper on production. Rest assured that I am hell-bent on finishing this sucker and that I am available (and grateful!) for friendly prodding on my tumblr, testified-timaeus.


	4. Youth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BUCKLE UP KIDDOS, IT'S GOING TO BE A BUMPY RIDE.

“You sure you’re okay?” Terezi’s got her bony hands on either side of your face, feeling up your flushed cheeks. You look down at your arm; you’d started off tallying the number of drinks you'd had in neat rows of sharpie lines, but around shot number eight your tick marks devolved into a hot squiggle orgy. Looks like you’ve already outdone last year.  
  
“M’good,” You mumble as you plop down on the edge of your bed. Terezi leans against your mix decks, and you vaguely worry about her ass knocking them over.  
  
“You gonna tell me why you didn’t bang that girl at the bar?” Leave it to Terezi to look out for you in the weirdest fucking way possible.  
  
“Not my type.” You lean back till your head hits the mattress, staring at the stucco pattern on your ceiling.  
  
“You don’t have a type. Everything with a vagina is your type.”  
  
“You’re mixing up who wants me with who I want,” You slur with a grin. Terezi mutters something you can only just pick up.  
  
“D’you say something about Jade?” She gives you a leering grin.  
  
“Nope, nothing at all. I’m rolling out. Try not to choke on your own puke.” You give her a rousing middle finger as she swings through your door frame. “Oh,” She adds before she disappears out of sight, “Happy birthday, Coolkid.”  
  
You grunt in her direction, pulling off your stupid shades and tossing them on the comforter by your side as you hear your front door click shut. Some dizzying horizontal acrobatics get you to the other corner of your bed, where you throw out an arm and fish through your bedside drawer. Chargers, bills, miscellaneous bullshit...your fingers claw at the back of the drawer until you feel the slick plastic you’re looking for. You pull out a weathered sandwich bag with a clump of tinfoil inside. You left yourself a wry message on the outside in sharpie: “To fucked up future Dave, from fucked up past Dave”. Past you really knew how to call them like he saw them.  
  
You pop the seal open and unwrap the closest edge of tinfoil, shaking the bag around until a red tablet falls onto your pillow. Bingo.  
  
You take the time to reseal your stash before you roll the pill between two fingers, holding it up in the dim light to check for any imperfections you don’t give a shit about. Too lazy to get a glass of water, you prop yourself up on an elbow and down the tablet dry, leaving a bitter taste where it landed on your tongue as you ease back onto your bed with a sigh. Happy fucking birthday, Coolkid.

* * *

Jade’s a little out of breath as she skips up the steps to Dave’s floor, her teeth still chattering from the brisk night air. Sure, she’d promised not to pull any birthday shenanigans, but the real beauty of Pesterchum is that no one can see if she’s crossing her fingers. A red paper bag swings from her fingertips as she knocks on the door, quietly enough that she probably won’t bother the neighbors. A minute goes by, and she tries again, a little louder. Two more minutes go by.  
  
“...Dave? You in there?”  
  
“Technically, yeah, he is.” She jumps out of her skin as Terezi answers her question, her head peeking out of a crack in her door.  
  
“Hah...” She wheezes for a second, her heart still pounding in her ears. “Hi. Um, what do you mean, ‘technically’?” Terezi totally blows off her question.    
  
“You got something for him? I can give it to him later.”  
  
“Well...” She fidgets with the bag in her hands, leaning a shoulder against the door frame. “I was kind of hoping to see him. Wish him a happy birthday right at midnight, you know.”  
  
“Are you in love with him?” Jade splutters for a moment, totally caught off guard. She always gave Dave smack for being bad at feelings jams, but she’s starting to sympathize if _this_ is how they usually go.  
  
“I...” Terezi is Dave’s closest friend, after all. She’s probably heard everything already. ”Y-Yeah. I guess I am.”  
  
“You guess, or you know?” Jade squirms like a witness on the stand. What the hell prompted this?  
  
“No, I’m sure. I’m in love with Dave.” A smile pulls at her lips, because it’s the first time she’s ever said it out loud. Terezi isn’t looking as heartfelt; her lips are pressed into a pretty Striderian deadpan as she drums her fingers on her chin.  
  
“I guess we’ll find out. Wait there.” That was a pretty weird reply. Jade chalks it up to Terezi being...well, Terezi. As nice as she was, sometimes Jade wondered if she operated on a different radio signal, so to speak.  
  
“Make sure you get this back to me before you leave. Dave’s kind of a shit-flipper about security.”  
  
“...What?” Jade flinches as something goes flying past her face, clattering to the ground a few feet away. She eyes down Terezi’s door, but she’s already lost in the darkness of her apartment. Yep; if the whole world’s running on FM, she’s definitely some obscure AM channel out in the middle of nowhere.  
  
Jade drops her bag by her feet and retrieves whatever Terezi just tossed at her, which turns out to be a silver key. Is she just supposed to let herself in? That feels a little strange. She knocks one last time and presses her ear to the door; she hears a few thuds that might be footsteps, but nothing more. She sucks in a deep breath as she slips the key into the lock, half-expecting it to stick without opening. A clean click sounds after a quarter-turn. Looks like she’s doing this after all. She gives the door a resolute stare as she turns the knob and pushes it open.

* * *

You look up as light floods into the room, warping into a ton of trigonometric clusterfucks as it bathes your walls, your floors, your hands. Your eyes adjust and fuck you with a rake, it’s Jade! It’s a hundred Jades, all an inch ahead of each other as they trail towards you.  
  
“Dave? What’s going on?”  
  
“Sup, Harley!” The world falls out from under you a few hundred times over as you get to your feet, your hands finding Jade’s sides, your lips finding her cheek.  
  
“I came here to...” Her voice muddies out like you just plunged underwater. You laugh.  
  
“I was wondering when you’d show up. C’mere, I’ll introduce you.” Jade’s staring around the dark apartment, wondering who the hell else could be here as you pull her into your living room with ice-cold fingers. She isn’t familiar enough with the scent of liquor to pin it, but something coming off your breath made her gag, something that’s put a sallow sheen on your cheeks and a pretty heavy knot in her stomach.  
  
“Bro, this is Jade. Jade, Bro.” Jade’s blood freezes in her veins as she looks at the empty couch you’re pointing at.  
  
“Dave...” She breathes, wondering where all the air in her lungs went. You grin at her, and she can barely make out a ring of red around your huge pupils.  
  
“Yeah, he’s kind of a sullen son of a bitch. Don’t take it personally. He sure doesn’t take it personally when I call him a sullen son of a bitch, but that’s probably because I can take him in a fight now.” You chuckle, and Jade’s never been so scared in her entire life.  
  
“Dave, listen.” You snort at something hilarious Bro said. Fuck, you’d almost forgotten how cool he was. Cooler than you’ll ever be.  
  
“Don’t tell me you’re having a Stacy’s Mom moment, Harley,” You tease. You don’t notice the way Jade stiffens against the melting wall behind her.  
  
“Dave.” Her throat is dry as bone; she’s choking out a whisper, trying not to let you feel her fingers shake. “Dave, look at me.”  
  
You angle your head her way like she just pulled you out of a dope conversation, which she kind of did, but you’ll let it slide because it’s Jade. It’s just been so long, you and Bro have so much to catch up on. Maybe you should call him down to visit more often.  
  
“Dave, no one’s there. Your bro is gone, remember? It’s just you and me in your apartment.” She pauses before every word, like she’s walking through a mine field and just waiting for one to blow under her feet. You don’t move a muscle for a long time; you’re just staring at a framed comic past Jade’s shoulder, your glazed eyes shifting in and out focus. Jade’s heart is pounding in her ears as she watches your every move, waiting for that fucking bomb to go off already.  
  
“Bro is dead.” Your mouth forms the words but your ears don’t hear it. Another Dave is fighting you for the mic, and your breath is picking up because you thought you’d taken care of that fuck a long time ago. Jade smiles for encouragement, eggs you on with a weak nod as her eyes glass over with panicked tears.  
  
“That’s right, Dave. It’s just us. We’re the only two here.” Other Dave sucker punches you down and gets right over your face, his stupid fucking eyes shining like the devil’s.  
  
 _Just us, bro. Everyone else is eight feet under, remember? Remember the mud on the ground?_  
  
“No,” You hiss, closing your eyes to shut him out but his eyes are still there, red like candy, red like blood.  
  
 _Remember the way his shades were floating around in his own blood? Remember the stain on the wood even after you tore the carpets out?_  
  
“Stop,” You whine like a thirteen-year-old nerd huddled on the floor, choking on his own tears.  
  
 _Remember how you made it just in time to hear him rattle out his last breath, like an 80-year-old stuck in a home for old people no one gives a shit about? Remember how his fingers twitched while you screamed?_  
  
You’re screaming, and your bro’s fucking fingers are twitching, and he’s pulling his shoulders off the ground, fresh blood spurting past his lips. He looks at you with dead eyes, light catching on the sword lodged in his chest as his shirt soaks red.  
  
“ _No brother of mine would have left me to die, you worthless little shit_.” He starts to snarl more profanities at you but his jaw snaps off at the hinge, his body’s falling to pieces, it’s just blood and guts and that godforsaken sword stuck in your floor and you can’t move, you can’t breathe, you can’t stop shrieking like a crazy bitch.  
  
“Dave...Dave... _Dave_.” Bro’s voice turns into your own, and then into Jade’s.  
  
Jade.  
  
You’re on the floor, but you’re not in Houston. You’re in Manhattan, in the apartment you bought when you turned eighteen and flew the shitty foster coop. You’re staring into your hands; you’re curled into a ball, your knees close to hitting your forehead. Your entire body is shaking.  
  
“Dave, can you hear me?” You look up and there’s Harley on her knees, shaking even harder than you, a glistening line of tears down both her cheeks. Harley, what a motherfucking saint.  
  
You start showing some sign of awareness that wasn’t there before, because Jade’s so thrilled she’s fucking _laughing_ , but she’s also crying and all over you before you can even move. You’re both shaking so hard it’s a miracle you’re not falling over.  
  
“Dave, oh my god, I was so _scared_ , you weren’t saying anything and then you started screaming, and I didn’t want to leave you to get Terezi and, _god_.” She’s babbling, and you’re hearing her, and she knows you’re hearing her and that makes her babble more. The red burned into your eyes is fading; your breath is evening out. You wrap your arms around Jade’s waist, losing yourself in the warm fabric of her wool jacket like that first day at the coffeeshop.  
  
“It’s okay,” You say, and your voice is hoarse from all your batshit screaming. “Fuck, you shouldn’t have had to deal with that, I’m so sorry.” You wish you could sound more genuine, but your emotion tank's running in the negatives at this point. Jade shakes her head against your ear.  
  
“No, don’t apologize. I never knew...have you talked to anyone? Does Terezi know?” You ten-thousand-percent do not want to have this conversation right now, but you really owe it to Jade to not be an unfeeling dick right now. You owe her a whole lot more than that.  
  
“I whored it up with plenty of shrinks, and Terezi’s gotten enough out of me to piece some shit together." Your snide comment's undercut by the way your voice is shaking. "I thought she knew better than to let someone into my apartment on my birthday.”  
  
“This...happens a lot?” You watch her dance around directly mentioning your drug-induced psychopathic meltdown.    
  
“Not anymore, now it’s just on deathiversaries.” You say it with more ease than you’d thought; the more you think about Bro’s angry corpse, the harder it gets to actually remember, like the details of a terrible dream. “Terezi used to come banging on my door in the nude all the time cause I’d scream in my sleep. Shit was getting a little too sexually tense, so I told her I’d pick up another therapist and I got her some earplugs for Christmas.”  
  
“Did you get another therapist?”  
  
Silence. Jade’s watching you with those giant fucking eyes of hers, and you really wish her x-ray vision went both ways.  
  
“I don’t know if you’ve picked this up yet, but underneath this rad frozen cucumber of an exterior, I’m pretty much a hot fucking mess.”  
  
“You’re not a mess. You saw something terrible, and you’re trying to cope. There’s nothing wrong or even bad about that.” Jade cuts straight through your ironic self-deprecation and gets back to real talk. You don’t really know why you were hoping to blow this off; it’s kind of a big deal to the average dude. To a normal dude.  
  
“It’s not on you to take care of me, Harley. I’m a grown ass man, I can handle my own shit. Go home, get some rest, find someone to invest in who isn’t kind of a fuckup.”  
  
“Dave, you fucking moron.” She’s looking at you like you just told a terrible joke, which is pretty much the last look you expected to see on her face. She presses her lips to yours, her fingers still chilled from her fading panic against the back of your neck. “I’m invested in you, okay? One hundred percent. I’m throwing all my funds into Dave Strider Inc. and I’m writing these stocks into my will as untouchable.”  
  
“That’s a fucking terrible business decision, but I won’t tell you how to spend your metaphorical money.” You smile and kiss her again, because breathing in the flowery scent of eau de Jade against your skin is sobering you up like the greatest cold shower in the universe. You pull away a pretty minute later and she slides across your waist, curling up by your side as you lean against the bottom of your couch.  
  
“I have another promise for you to make,” She announces as she settles her head on your collarbone.  
  
“Beg all you want, I’m not selling you my body.” You feel her breath against your neck, warm and comforting as she breathes out a laugh. Could you really have been sobbing over your dead bro’s corpse less than thirty minutes ago? The memory of your episode isn’t even a dream anymore; it’s a down-on-its-luck apprentice dream that sucks dick in the bathroom with the hope that you might vaguely remember what it was in a week.  
  
“Don’t hide things from me anymore,” Jade orders into the front of your shirt. You’re glad she can’t see your smirk.  
  
“Gotta be more specific, Harley. What, you want me to call you every time I jack—”  
  
“I’m _serious_ , Dave.” She glares up at you, and you can still see the trail of dried tears on her cheek. You sigh, mostly at the fact that you’re a giant douche.  
  
“My morally questionable drug habits and grief-ridden neuroses pretty much wrap up the list of blood-sworn Strider secrets, but if anything else crops up I’ll let you know.”  
  
“You damn better.” Satisfied with your mildly sarcastic oath, she settles back down on her chest. “Hey...” She’s chewing on some question against her lip, picking nervously at the ends of your sleeve. You wonder what it could be; Jade’s usual M.O. is to just blather out whatever’s in her head.  
  
“Spit it out, Harley.”  
  
“Can I ask...” She hesitates again. Is she trying to get in your pants or something? The fuck’s got her so flustered? “Can I ask what your bro was like?”  
  
Well, that’s no booty call. You feel Jade tense, waiting for you to snap into some maniacal relapse. You're half expecting it too, but it looks like your little red pill ran its course. If anything ever earned some choice childhood Strider anecdotes, it's Harley's medal-worthy display tonight.   
  
“My bro was weird as all hell,” You start with a strange smile, like you’re reminiscing about an expensive dog that ran away on its first day home like an asshole. Jade eases back into your side. “You remember the smuppets, right?”  
  
“Kind of. Remind me!”  
  
So you do; you tell her about the smuppets, and strifing, and that stupid Lil Cal doll that you swore moved around at night. You even tell her about things you haven’t thought about in ages: how he had a hat rack full of twenty of the same goddamn hat, how he used to hit on the Domino’s waitress every time you went for the Two for Tuesdays special, how he used to shed manly tears every time the blue dude in _Gurren Lagann_ died, even though he was basically the world’s biggest dumbass and the hot ginger was way cooler. You’re halfway through the legendary tale of when you brought Bro to your elementary school career day when you hear a soft snore under your chin. You look down at Jade, who’s good and conked out on your chest, and then up at the clock on your wall. No wonder she’s tired, it’s 4 in the goddamn morning. You prod her a few times to see if she wants to go home, but she’s out like a light.  
  
“Alright, come on Harley,” You groan as you slide out from under her and pick her up dead-bridal style, her limbs flailing around as you juggle her weight in your admittedly scrawny arms. Jesus, she sleeps like a rock.  
  
You stagger towards your room, doing your damnedest to drop her onto your bed without giving her a concussion. She mumbles a little as you ease off her glasses and pull your comforter over her shoulders, but you manage to grab a pillow and amscray with a solid Mission Accomplished.  
  
You sprawl across your couch and spend an hour or two staring at your ceiling, your arms tucked behind your head as your totally fried mind wanders around your train of thought. You think about the way Jade’s eyes had bored into your head when she asked about therapy...you have a contact to Lalonde now, maybe she’d be better than some schmuck Manhattanite. You close your eyes and grin as you hear your mental snotty British Rose voice talking you into a corner about Oedipal complexes.  
  
You only notice you’ve fallen asleep when you wake to the feeling of getting smushed into the folds of your couch. You wildly wonder if you’re being robbed when something that smells like gardenias settles against your back, winding her arms around your chest.  
  
“What kind of idiot gives me the whole bed to myself?” You hear against your ear as you drift back to sleep.


	5. Hope for Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to keep you guys waiting so long! I'd sit around and write this thing all day if I could, but fate is cruel and o-chem is hard.

“Terezi.”  
  
You plow through her front door, barely slowing down to turn the knob. The creak of the hinge is enough to set your skull on fire; you’re going to need a factory’s worth of ibuprofen to power through this hangover.  
  
“Painkillers are in the drawer.” Terezi’s freakishly on point per usual, not even bothering to look up from her hunched position at her kitchen counter. You make a beeline for her pill stash and down a couple Advils straight from the bottle.  
  
“Terezi, I need you to tell me—”  
  
“Shh-sh-sh-sh-sh.” She throws one hand at you, and you can see the other one scribbling away on a piece of paper with the wrong end of a red crayon. “It’s almost done.”  
  
You sigh until you force all the breath out of your lungs, dropping your forehead onto the cool surface of Terezi’s counter. “As kickass as your comics always are, this isn’t really the time, dude. I can’t remember what—”  
  
“Nope, nope, nope.” Terezi’s making a field day out of cutting you off. “You’ve forgotten one of the Strider-Pyrope cardinal rules: It’s always kickass comic time.” To make her point, she plucks her new masterpiece off the counter and throws it in front of your face. You take it from her and hold it at arm’s length, surveying her handiwork. You easily spot yourself at the top of the page, your shades superimposed on some stock image bimbo with an arm full of Jack Daniel’s. The next few panels feature Terezi and Jade exchanging a lot of “blahs”, ending with an altered screenshot from Scooby-Doo with Shaggy-you and Scooby-Jade flipping several choice shits over a lame ghost with your old shades drawn on.  
  
It is, by all standards, an especially prolific comic.  
  
“While your artistic integrity is spot-on, this doesn’t really help me. I need to remember what happened last night.”  
  
Terezi grins like a sly bastard. “Damn, you really blacked out hard. That, my cool friend, is exactly what happened last night.”  
  
You pull your eyes back down to the paper in your hands, scanning it like a shitty page out of Where’s Waldo. You with a bottle of whiskey. Okay, you got shitfaced. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Next is Terezi and Jade blahing it up.  
  
“You talked to Jade last night?”  
  
She smirks. “We had what you like to call a feelings jam. You might even say it was like a feelings lollapalooza.”  
  
“I would never compare something to the corporate shitshow known as lollapalooza.”  
  
“You’re missing the point, Dave.”  
  
“Then tell me what you jammed about.” You do your best not to grit your teeth; your patience is running a few hairs too thin.  
  
“You’ll have to talk to her. You really need to talk to her in general, actually. But for what it’s worth right now, we jammed it out and then I gave her my spare key to your place.”  
  
“Okay...” If you pound out your brain you can kind of remember being drunk in your bed. You know you took your little red pill, because you always take that little red pill when December 3 rolls around. What happened next...feels like a really weird dream.  
  
“So the last panel...” You’re starting to get an inkling about why the ghost is wearing your old shades, but you might be better off thinking that didn’t really happen.  
  
“You were screaming again last night. First time in a while. Jade was too, for a little bit. Well, I guessed it was Jade; blitzed or not, I don’t really see why you’d be yelling your own name.”    
  
So that...was no shitty dream. You swallow down the cold knot in your throat.  
  
“I had a raving hallucination about my dead brother in front of Jade.”  
  
“Little bit.”  She puts a hand on your shoulder, her voice dropping out of concern. “You okay?”  
  
“‘Course.” You roll out of her touch and prop yourself against the arm of Terezi’s couch, digging your elbows into your sides and your temples into your palms. “Psychopathic meltdowns on hallucinogenic drugs are my one-way ticket into any girl’s pants.” Terezi doesn’t laugh. “Where is she now? Did she leave last night?”  
  
“Hardly.” She chuckles dryly. “She was talking to somebody on the phone for ages real early in the morning. Lotta business jargon; shifts, vacation time, projects. I went and dragged her out to go be wherever she needed to be around 9, but it took a lot of pulled hair and bullshit promises. I think I broke at least thirty oaths on my soul just leaving you alone in your place for more than two seconds.”  
  
You groan into your hands. “She’s such an idiot.”  
  
Only an idiot would put their fucking job on the line over something this stupid. You remember Jade talking about her ass of a boss, her demanding hours, the cutthroat competition in the lab. If she threw all that away for your blacked out ass...  
  
“Don’t beat yourself up, Dave. She gets a lot more than you think she does. And maybe this is for the better, you know?” No, you don’t know, and you don’t like where this is going. “Maybe this is a sign you need to get some more help.”  
  
And there’s the bulls-eye. “On a time-appropriate comment scale of zero to making an Anne Frank joke at a Holocaust memorial service, that was making an Anne Frank joke at a Holocaust memorial service.”  
  
“I’m just saying. I’m trying to help.”  
  
“I’m not a goddamn basket case. I’m a dude with a life and an apartment who goes on bad trips sometimes. It’s part of my genius.”  
  
“If you say so.” You really do fucking say so. You let yourself slide onto the couch, your legs hanging limp over the side while you stare blankly at the ceiling.    
  
“I need to fix this.”   
  
“There’s nothing to fix, Dave. It happened; you need to accept it and move on. Jade really didn’t give a shit about anything but whether or not you were gonna die in your sleep, from what I could tell.”  
  
“I’m just supposed to accept the fact that my long-lost childhood friend, who I happen to have the fucking hots for, saw me crying on the floor over my dead bro?” Your voice is steady but your blood's heating up. This is ridiculous, Terezi’s being ridiculous. You’re fucking ridiculous, pulling Jade into your personal horseshit.  
  
“Yeah, Dave, you are. You made your choice when you blew off all your help and switched out your meds for drugs. She made hers when she stayed with you all night to make sure you were okay instead of running for the hills like any sane fucking person would have done.”  
  
“I asked for advice, not unironically brutal honesty.”  
  
Terezi drops a rare sigh-laugh combo. “For a super cool kid, you can be really fucking dense.” You engage yourself in a pretty heated staring contest with Terezi’s shades, your breath shallow as your uncharged Prius of a brain stupidly putters into gear.  
  
You tried so hard to get her to abandon your sinking ship, but there she is on deck with a fucking pool floatie in her hands.  
  
“I know what I’m going to do.” You think you know what you need to do. You definitely know what you want to do, at the least.  
  
“What are you going to do?”  
  
“I’m gonna find Harley.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Like right now.”  
  
“Got it.”  
  
“I’m gonna tell her she’s a colossal dumbass.”  
  
“'Stupid shit' might work too.”  
  
“I’m gonna offer to set her up an account on eHarmony and hook her up with a nice balding 29-year-old part-time marketer.”  
  
“At least get her somebody with hair.”  
  
“Then I’m gonna collapse at her feet and confess my undying love like I’m Ben Affleck in a shitty rom-com.”  
  
“Took you fucking long enough.”  
  
You both grin. “Thanks, Terezi.”  
  
“Shut up and haul ass.”  
  
You tug at the ends of her hair as you roll past her and out the door, skipping down the stairs so fast your steps echo like a sick drumroll. You’re not sure why but you’re hit with a sudden sense of urgency, like you’re in a real-world time trial with one life to spare and the clock’s ticking way too fast. The bright sun and brisk chill of late December afternoons hit you straight in the balls as you realize you left your jacket and shades somewhere on the floor of your apartment. You couldn’t give two shits to rub together; one look at the traffic and you drop a ‘fuck it’ and start running, your head pounding out an ill beat in time with your heart as you weave through idling MILFs and suits yelling into their phones. Pretty soon your legs are burning and you’re wheezing like an asthmatic, but you make the ten minute taxi ride to Jade’s building in under six. One look at the stairs and your calves are screaming for mercy; the elevator might give you some time to pull yourself together, anyway.  
  
You punch the four on the button panel and try to even out your breathing as the metal doors slide shut, the car taking its sweet time to lurch upwards. You stare at your reflection in the grey steel and sigh. Batshit red eyes, radical bed hair, the same tattered shirt you’d worn out the night before...you’ve never looked better.  
  
You’re about to start rehearsing some lines in a first-rate display of irony when the doors creak open way sooner than expected. You freeze in the car, your heart pinballing around your chest like it just did a line of crack off your ribcage. Why the hell are you here? You don’t even know what to say, you don’t even know if she’s home, you don’t even know if you’re doing the right thing.  
  
Fuck it again, you're totally doing this.  

You throw out an arm to stop the elevator doors from closing on you before you slip past them. Each step through the deserted landing makes you feel more like you’re an asshole teenager again, trespassing into school after hours to fake-smoke a cigarette. You hear the muffled sound of an electric guitar rumbling behind closed doors and you think somebody’s blasting their stereo, but it keeps getting louder the closer you get to Jade’s door. She must be playing her bass.

You’d seen the stringed monstrosity propped up against her couch on occasion, but she refused to play it for you until you agreed to haul out your decks and make it a jam session. You still remember what you’d said in reply: like hell you’re throwing three thousand dollars’ worth of equipment into a taxi just to hear Harley play the riff from Seven Nation Army. You kind of wish you had, though; she’s putting that asshole from The White Stripes to shame.  
  
“Harley.” You knock on the door as loud as you think you can without being a douche; the bass keeps going. “Jade.” Your knocks quickly devolve into enthusiastic hammering, still to no avail. She’s really in the zone.  
  
You try the knob and it turns like you’ve been expected this whole time. You let it slide forward of its own accord, the rapid-fire runs coming off Jade’s bass greeting you in her place as the sound rolls through your feet.

You suck in a deep breath, remind yourself that you have a pair of balls, and march through Jade’s living room, traversing a minefield of stupid squiddle plushes all over the floor as you round the corner and engage her bedroom door in an intense standoff. You’ve actually never been in Jade’s room before; you always just dicked around on her couch by the TV or scavenged for food in the kitchen. Letting yourself in is starting to feel a little voyeuristic.  
  
Behind the painted white door currently keeping you at bay, Jade rounds out her shredfest and eases into a lazy chord progression, probably to bide some time until her fingers stop smoking. You could totally drop a sick beat under that.

Alright, Strider. You're a man on a mission and it is go time. You give the door a little nudge and let momentum do the rest, standing in the doorframe in all your disheveled glory.  
  
“Dave! What are you—?” You stare at Jade’s hands instead of her face, watching her fingers jerk down the fretboard in surprise. The chord she’d started arches up in tone, like her bass is raising its eyebrows at you. You finally look up and Jade’s staring at you like you just grew a dick out of your forehead.  
  
“Keep going.” You’ve got this down. You’re going to do this and you’re going to do it right fucking now.  
  
“Are you—?”  
  
“English, Harley. Do you speak it? Go back to whatever you were just doing.” She blinks in surprise but plays along, cycling through the same four chords. You pull at your shirt collar and clear your throat, blood and adrenaline roaring through your veins.  
  
Jade looks at you with furrowed brows but keeps up her rhythm. You almost want to laugh—she probably thinks you’re still high as fuck right now. You’re probably high as fuck for doing this in the first place. Then again, your bro always did say raps speak louder than words.  
  
“Okay. Uh-huh.” Here fucking goes.  
  
 _I was twelve years old when this girl first talked to me_  
 _nothin but exclamation points and fucking neon green_  
 _she liked the crazy fauna, I’d saw tha furry shit on the net_  
 _I did what any kid would do: I said come on nerd, forget it_  
 _but she wasn’t like the rest, she just took it and laughed_  
 _‘only a kid as cool as you could make friends with talk like that!!!!!!!!’_  
 _hell yeah I’m that cool, this gnostic chick’s got some style_  
 _we traded words, traded names, traded lives for a while, but_  
 _I got torn from the digital and thrown into the literal_  
 _GG got swallowed up in the hell of my world_  
 _the sick web of our correspondence got quickly unfurled_  
  
You’re running out of breath a thousand times faster than usual and Jade’s trailing off on her tempo and everything’s pretty much going to shit, but fuck you in the mouth with a puppet if you’re not going to get to the end of this.  
  
 _just like that, when I was twenty-one I hit up Pesterchum_  
 _green text, green eyes_  
 _I popped up on our log to your motherfuckin surprise_  
 _We rolled through the city, you had no pity, you were so goddamn pretty_  
 _in that bitty black number_  
 _nothin like the rest, you took me for my best, always impressed_  
 _willing to turn the other cheek whenever I transgressed_  
 _but then I fucked up pretty bad, I prob’ly shoulda confessed_  
 _that I was messed up, going down, need to fucking turn around_  
 _I threw too much but there you were, so sound, so profound, so goddamn grounded_  
 _I’ll say it till I die, say that you deserve more_  
 _feel free to drop the bass and kick me out the fuckin’ door_  
 _I don’t know what you think, you know all my shit’s true_  
 _but remember, Jade Harley—_  
  
“What should I remember, Dave?”  
  
You don’t know if she just dropped the riff or if you’ve been rambling in silence this whole time, but suddenly Jade’s unusually tiny voice is the only one in the room and you've utterly lost your grasp on the English language. Three more seconds and you would have spat out the wicked truth and been done, but here you are, floundering at the foot of Jade’s bed. You stare hard at her crazy bright eyes, the absence of your shades more prominent than ever, and swallow down the anxious lump in your throat. Come on, Dave. You’re too close to the end hoop to drop the ball now.  
  
“Remember, Jade Harley,” You say it deliberately, emphasizing every few syllables like you’re still rapping but your beat just dropped down about forty notches, “That you’re the shit, and I love you.”  
  
You feel like you’re collapsing in on yourself as soon as the words leave your mouth; you don’t know if it’s the run across Manhattan or the hangover or the fact that the sudden silence in the room is choking you out.  
  
Jade takes her time pulling the strap of her bass over her shoulder, unplugging the amp, setting the guitar gingerly on its stand by her feet. Your guts are rolling around in your stomach the whole time, your fingernails digging into your palms as you ball your hands into fists inside your pockets. She finally straightens up and steps towards you, and the intoxicating smell of flowers and the sharpness of her stare knock you like a one-two punch to the solar plexus. Your eyes roam around her face out of habit before you remember your face is going commando and you're hella exposed.  
  
“I do think what happened last night shouldn’t have happened.” She lingers on every word before she drops the next. She’s being careful.  
  
“You’re right. I never meant for it to.” Her eyes twitch, and suddenly she looks angry.  
  
“I don’t just mean the fact that I was there. I mean that it happened at all. I,” She starts tiptoeing again, pulling at the braid thrown over her shoulder while she deliberates, “I want you to be happy, Dave. I really, really, want you to be happy.”  
  
“Then tell me you love me.” You say it on impulse but you don’t regret it. You need to hear it, you need to justify everything you’ve done, everything you want to do.  
  
“Another promise first.” You feel yourself breathe again; you’re not really sure when you stopped.  
  
“Jesus Harley, I don’t know if I want a confession from you if shit’s conditional.” Jade pulls a grin, but it doesn’t go past her lips.  
  
“It doesn’t change the fact. Nothing changes the fact.” You can’t really explain why hearing that puts a little pretzel knot in your stomach. Probably just another detour in today’s wild ride through Emotional Shitstorm City, Population: Dave.  
  
“I, Dave Strider,” She starts.  
  
“I, Dave Strider.” You get the feeling this isn’t an oath to amend for the sake of a cheap joke.  
  
“Will, from this day forth, do everything in my power, excluding the use of any and all substances, to be as happy as possible. Especially on my birthday.”  
  
“Jade...” You’re sitting in a coffeeshop again, listening to how badly you fucked over the people you cared about because you couldn’t handle your own feelings.  
  
“Swear it.” Her gaze drops to your chin. If it was anyone else in the world, you’d think they got tired of looking at your freaky red eyes.  
  
“I don’t know if I can do that right now.” You’re close enough that you’re speaking in murmurs, which is probably the only volume at which you’d ever say that out loud.  
  
“Promise that you’ll try.” Your rock-solid resolve is rapidly transforming into silly putty.  
  
“Jade, I can’t do this, I can’t drag you down wi—”  
  
“I don’t know if you remember this, but I told you yesterday that if you said anything like that ever again, I’d punch your lights out. I’m a girl of my word, Dave.” She’s got steel in her eyes, and you can tell she fucking means it.  
  
“For the sake of my perfect profile, I promise.”  
  
“Promise for your own sake, not your nose’s.”  
  
“I’ll keep it for yours.” This time you really fucking mean it.  
  
“You better.” She curls her fingers around your wrists and presses her lips against yours, but this time it’s different. This isn’t a chaste kiss on a rooftop. This is Jade sucking your lip, pullling you flush against her body, clawing at your hair while she slips her tongue past your lips. This is _wild_.  
  
You’re not even sure how long it’s been when you pull apart, but you’re pretty sure you’re not breathing so hard from lack of oxygen alone.  
  
“Jade.” You say it like you’re making sure it’s her who replies, that it really was Jade Harley who just left your mouth raw.  
  
“You wanted a confession, didn’t you?” She smiles up at you, catching up on lost air through her half-parted lips, and you’re floored off your goddamn feet.  
  
“Always over the top with you.” You wind your arms around her waist as she steps forward until the back of your knees hit her bed frame, and you feel so, so high.  
  
“Do you still want me to say it?” You can feel Jade’s breath on your cheek, feel her voice slipping past your ears and running down your spine. When did you sit on the edge of the bed? How long have her knees been on either side of your waist?  
  
“A little verbal legality never hurt. I usually bring a pre-nup to these kinds of things, but I was in a bit of a fucking hurry.” You can feel her laugh under your fingertips. This goddamn girl with dumb glasses and dorky teeth is going to ruin you.  
  
“I love you, Dave,” She whispers against the hollow of your neck, and you can feel her lips forming the words against your skin. You make an effort not to roll your eyes into the back of your head as she trails her fingers up the inside of your shirt. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”  
  
You’re dazed, you’re lost, you’re out of your goddamn mind. Time loses its consistency and turns into jerky stills, like a bored projectionist cut a ton of frames out of a movie reel.

You’re chanting her name like a mantra while her teeth find your ear, her weight rolling tantalizing circles across your hips. You’re ripping off your shirt like it burns to the touch while she shimmies out of her jeans. You’re pawing at the thin line of fabric across Jade’s back like a stupid virgin before she laughs into your collarbone and undoes the clasp in the front. You knock over her bass with an acoustic twang while you scramble further up the bed; she laughs between your arms. She breathes out your name so all you hear is the sharp “D—” and everything else is just hot fuzz as you trail your lips down her ribs and keep on going. She arches her neck like something out of your choicest goddamn pornos as you pick up your own rhythm, slow and sensual like the chords she played you in the doorway. All you see are her eyes like neon planets, all you hear is the soft moan that leaps from her throat straight into yours, all you feel is the sharp sensation of her fingers clawing into your back as she beats you in the race to oblivion with your name hot on her lips. You fall apart against her chest, shoulders heaving, eyes lidded, blissed beyond belief. Neither of you can form more than three words, so you just toss them back and forth—I love you, I love you, I love you.


	6. Staying Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so so so sorry for the hiatus I'm back and I've got more line break vignettes yay yay yay yay  
> thank you all for your continued comment/kudo/tumblr love, you guys keep me going!!

_You’re sitting on a ledge. A damn high ledge. You look down and it’s a pretty thirty floors down to an unforgiving concrete bottom. You look up and it’s nothing but buildings, taller ones, shorter ones, brick, metal, windows, billboards, everything you’d expect to see in the sweaty balls of Houston._

_You feel a clap on your back — you_ really _feel that clap on your back, like a sledgehammer to your spine and you’re glad you’re facing the other way because you’re pretty sure you might have just taken lady physics up on that date to the ground if you’d been any closer to the edge. You tense up as you turn, expecting to find yourself thrown into a strife, but your eyes just ram straight into the gross muscular wall that is Bro’s torso. You look up and his smile is almost as crooked as his shades._

_“Shit little man, what’s that face for?” You roll your eyes, following through with your whole head so bro can tell you’re doing it. Ironically, of course._

_“Thanks for trying to snap my spinal cord outta my fucking body. You’re lucky I have my eye on your dirty smuppet money or I’d have child services all over your ass.” He laughs and swoops down on you like a bat out of hell, pinning you against him with one arm while he administers an olympic regulation noogie with the other._

_“Please, I’m the best legal guardian a kid could ask for.” You mutter a nice train of sarcastic profanity into his suffocating vice grip before he cuts you off with an urgent shush, effortlessly tossing you onto your feet like you’re his creepy puppet._

_“You’ve been holding out on me, you fucking casanova! Chip off the ol’ Strider block, ain’tcha?”_

_“What the hell are you talking about.”_

_“You gonna introduce me to your lady friend or what? Politeness comes first with the women; never forget that, squirt.”_

_Bro grabs you by the top of your head and angles you in the right direction, setting your shades and your do pretty thoroughly askew in the process. You’re half-blinded by the sudden onslaught of sunlight and you’re another quarter-blinded by the trillion watt smile Jade’s throwing off in front of you. She’s dancing on the ledge in that black dress you like so much, her legs skipping past each other like a fucking ballerina’s as she closes the distance and skitters to a halt in front of you. You’re so high up, the wind’s tugging at the hem of her dress and the afternoon sun’s throwing all its cosmic energy against her tanned skin and you could stand there making terrible metaphors for hours, easy._

_“Is this the infamous bro?” She angles down to peek under bro’s hat; you can imagine the dumbass grin plastered on his face even with his arm keeping you locked in a stowed and upright position._

_“So this must be the pretty young lady batshit enough to keep precious little Daveykins around. I applaud your patience.” You have never heard a pet name as atrocious as Daveykins in your entire life, and from the sound of Jade’s laugh she hasn’t either. You make a mental note to hold Cal hostage for an apology as Bro lets go of you to take Harley's hand._

_“I’m Jade, it’s a pleasure! I’ve heard so much about you.” Her eyes dart towards you for a secret second and you can feel the warmth of her eyes alongside the heat of the sun roasting your supremely white skin. Bro follows her gaze to raise an eyebrow; you smirk as you watch the meaty slab he calls a palm completely overtake Jade’s slender fingers._

_“That so? I’d say I hope it’s all good, but judging by this little shit’s past record, I kinda doubt that.” Jade laughs, and the shake of her shoulders sets off her dress in the sunlight like it's wired with a million lights._

_“Are you kidding me? All Dave ever talks about is how cool you a—”_

_“Well this was cute and shit, great having a nice intimate chat right here on this roof, just the three of us pals here.” Bro's giving you the trademark Get Ready for an Asskicking stare and Jade’s laughing off your interruption and the whole scene reeks of cliche anime end card syndrome but you’re not really complaining, at least not beyond the trauma of Harley and your Bro swapping embarrassing factoids about your existence. You wouldn’t mind just standing there watching them go at it, maybe drop in a spare ironic comment every now and again, but you can’t. You never can. Instead, you make the age-old decision to turn around._

_There’s Count Bitchula crouched on the ledge, already putting her weight into ramming the tip of a katana into your face. You flinch, throw your arms up, try to dodge, but there’s no stopping that sword from piercing your shades with a jarring crack. The rivulet of light Slutty Mary just bored into your lens is spreading across the bridge, down to the leg; your shades shatter just like they did on the bar floor, the pieces defying physics as they burst away from your face and fall to the ground, and when you look up all you can see is red._

_The roof is burning. Houston is burning. The whole goddamn world is burning._

_You see streak after streak of blinding light rocketing toward the earth; the cement under your feet starts to waver and a boom roars through your ears like thunder as the first round of asteroids makes impact. You look down and Jade’s on the ledge, eyes flooded with tears and wide in terror in a look you’re a little too familiar with as she takes a step back, hits the edge, throws out an arm to steady herself._

_You’re leaping up to pull her down but she screams “NO!”, and you look down and it’s Bro, but it’s not the laughing Bro that gave you noogies on the roof with his too-meaty arms, it’s the bro with a knife in his chest and eyes full of hate, cleaning his rusted blade against the skin of his own palm. Blood flies from the tip in a clean arc, spattering across the ground by his feet. He opens his mouth and a thousand voices roar, whisper, screech, sob all at once._

_**Didn’t try to save me, didn’t try to avenge me, didn’t do SHIT. Took my money, took some food, wasted your life, wasted this chick’s life. That’s what you are, you little fuck. You’re a WASTE.** _

_“Fuck you, you’re dead, you’re gone, you’re not allowed to shit talk me anymore!” You don’t know why you always try to talk to it, but you do, your voice shaking harder than the floor under your feet. The explosions are closer now; you can feel the rush of air as building after building levels across the skyline._

_“Dave, please, please stop this, please stop him, Dave, make it stop!!” Jade’s sobbing, and she’s got a fistful of your sleeve, and her heels are way too far over the ledge._

_**Always wanted to be like your big bro, didn't ya, you worthless little shit? Can't wait to turn out like me, huh? Drowned in my own blood for no reason, rotting in the ground, useless and forgotten?** _

_"You're not...you're not forgotten..."_

_You look back and there are crows, so many crows, you can’t hear anything but the flutter of wings and a discordant mix of caws and shrieks, you can’t see anything but the pull of Bro’s flesh before a beak manages to tear it away piece by piece. He’s pulling back, nothing but blood and bones, getting ready to swing, and you’re looking at him, and looking at Jade, but Jade's getting heavier on your arm, and then your hand, and then your slipping fingertips._

_“DAVE!”_

_You try so fucking hard to hang onto those slender little fingers, and you're shimmying away from the roaring corpse about to swing and suddenly it's too much and you can't salvage anything so you let yourself go. You let go of Jade, you let go of the edge and you’re falling, falling through fire and your own hate and your bro's hate and the ring of the thousand voices in your ears as you keep on falling._

_**YOU'RE** _

_**A** _

_**WASTE.** _

* * *

 “Fuck!”

You jolt back into your body with your heart banging around your chest like king kong on speed, your vision burned red with the flames eating up Houston as you gasp for air in a dark little room. The fires fade but your panic builds as you dart from left to right, trying in vain to figure out where the hell you are. Stars on the ceiling, stuffed animals on the shelves, books everywhere, an electric base strewn across the floor.   
  
A base. 

Jade's room. 

You look down and there's Jade, safe and unconscious, wrapped up in a nice little ball of her sheets. She looks different without her dorkspecs on — you notice the curve of her nose against her pillow, the arch of her revlon ad eyelashes that always end up brushing the glass of her lens when her face ends up too close to yours. Your own breathing starts to even out as you watch her shoulders rise and fall in a steady rhythm, eons away from the panicked, staggered sobs of the girl on the ledge. This matters. The shit in your head doesn't. 

You swing your legs over the edge of the bed and curve around the side of the window, balling up your fists to keep your hands from shaking; you focus your attention on the hesitant glow of morning light through the slats of Jade's blinds. A few seconds of footsying the floor earns you your underwear, lying long abandoned by the edge of the bed. Your eyes trail back to Harley and something unpleasant lurches into your throat at the thought of all the stupid kitschy shit you blurted out in the course of the night. I love yous led to I need yous led to I can't live without yous with a frightening speed; you hope the 'marry me' ghosting in the very back of your memory is just your imagination's attempt at a sick practical joke. 

Going back to sleep is still out of the question; it usually takes at least an hour for bro to book it out of your subconscious once he makes a guest appearance. You shimmy into your boxers and slip out of Jade's bedroom as stealthily as you can, though at this point you're pretty sure Harley could sleep through the goddamn apocalypse. The fiery, asteroid-laden apocalypse. You decide to backpedal out of that line of thought for now. 

The apartment is dead silent, but there's just enough that you can see the legion of glassy squiddle eyes watching you from the living room, hitting a little too close to the nostalgic trauma of a pair of wide blue eyes watching your impressionable young body in the dead of night. You hug the kitchen counter on your way around that unsettling roadblock and pull the closest door open, backing into the room as you quietly ease the knob back into place.

You turn around and you're assaulted by green. Plants on the floor, plants on the walls, plants hanging from the ceiling. You assume there's a pretty big pair of windows on the far wall but it's hard to even make sight of it with all the fucking plants in the way. 

You remove a pot of something that looks vaguely carnivorous from a vacant chair and take a seat at Jade's desk, leaning on the back two legs as you stare up at the monolith of Harlerian paraphernelia towering over you. The first few levels are books and papers, all with titles you can't make heads or tails of. Above that are a precariously balanced row of picture frames. Bec's in almost every one, looking as huge and stoic as a dog can really look next to a laughing Harley. The really old man's in a few of them too, a gun in one arm and his granddaughter in the other. As Jade gets taller her smile starts to fade, and gramps' pose starts to look more labored. By the time she's taller than Bec, he's good and gone from the Harley family scrapbook. 

She's alone in most of the other photos, the wrinkled glossy sheets stuffed into corners and leaned against larger glass frames. The only pictures of her as a teen are formal ones: graduation shots, senior pictures, trophy brag photoshoots. Braces come and go, she shoots up to twice Bec's height, her genuinely explosive Harley smile gets reserved for the light that never leaves her eyes. You work your way back down to ground level of her desk and find one last photo, carefully taped to the wooden frame hugging the wall. 

You see yourself, your casual stance betrayed by the way you're gasping for air, tears from laughter quickly building up behind your shades as you lean against a really fucking big oak tree. Harley's in even worse shape, doubled over at the base of the trunk, an arm reaching out towards you for much-needed medical assistance. You look like a pair of tiny nutjob ants losing your shit at the bottom of this gigantic tree that towers through the whole frame of the photo, leaving the two of you to take up the collective space of your fingernail. A photographic masterpiece if you ever saw one, which was why you gifted it to Jade as a reminder of her humble beginnings in the photography world. You brush a few fingers against the masking tape holding it in its unobstructed place with a smug grin leeching onto your face. 

You snap out of whatever dumb moment that was and decide you've probably trespassed enough into Jade's personal space. A flower lying a little too close to the path of your chair leg takes a head-on collision that you hope isn't critical as you slip onto your feet and try to forge an escape route through a labyrinth of pots. You decide to honor the flower's brave sacrifice by taking the longer, safer route around the edges of the room, ducking your head to avoid a menagerie of eco-friendly shit hanging in the air. The doorknob's nearly at your fingertips when you notice something decidedly out of place lying on a rare free patch of floor. 

A little red bag. 

You remember it swinging through your kaleidescope vision at the start of your Birthday Night Debaucle, your stoned brain filing it away as a minor detail when compared to the spitting image of your bro fake-chilling on your couch when Harley came to visit. She must have dumped it in her greenhouse-slash-office before running to work the next morning.

Well, curiosity always did kill the asshole. You pick it up and jostle its contents as you slip back into the kitchen and swing onto a barstool. 

You find your name on the tag in Harley's big curly handwriting that looks so out of place for a genius physicist. You patiently traverse an orgy of crumpled tissue paper before you dump the rest of your present onto the counter. 

Harley's attached another note with your name on it. You can see why she didn't just leave it for you to find; there's no way you could have figured out it was for you with all these bold fucking labels on every solid surface. You flip the note open and find a quaint little message inside. 

_Happy birthday Dave!!!!!!!!!!!! :D_

She even wrote the face sideways. You snort.

_I spent ages looking for a good present, but I'm pretty sure it's impossible to find something as cool as you are...haha, I hope this is close! Keep it fly, eye guy. Love, Jade_

You peel the tape off the note and only waste a second to register the gold Ray-Ban logo stamped on the front of the case in your hands before impatiently prying it open, and, wow, just,

holy shit fresh in god's golden toilet bowl. 

You hear the echoing chorus of a thousand angels descending from the pearly gates of heaven as you reverently unveil the raddest fucking pair of aviators you've ever seen in your life. The smooth curves, the crisp shine of the metal frame, the flawlessly polarized lenses...you barely resist the temptation to moan like a bear in heat as you revel in the glory of the shades from every possible angle. 

"Oh good, I really wanted to see your face when you unwrapped it!"

You jump out of your skin and have a terror-stricken out of body experience as Harley's sleepy voice appears inches from your ear. 

"Shit, if you wanna kill me just go out and do it proper, because 'literally scared to death' is going to look lame as hell on my coroner's report." You clutch your heart for dramatic effect, earning a snicker from Jade. 

"Sorry! I thought you heard me walk up."

"You couldn't sleep either?" She smiles a little smile and shakes her head. "Had an alarm set for work and I noticed you weren't there." You can see a ghost of the worry you'd seen on her face the night before and you vaguely regret saying anything at all. 

"Well, do you like them?" 

Jade's staring at you with the full scope of her cosmic intensity, her eyes the only thing wider than her smile. You think about answering with the lame truth, that this is probably the first time in your life that you've been completely, utterly overcome by all that love bullshit. You don't say that, of course, because that would make you a fruit.

"I'd say they're pretty fucking cool. The student may be approaching the skill of the master."

"Really!? You really like them!?!"

"Hell yeah I do." Jade looks ecstatic, like a little kid whose parents legitimately offered to buy anything she wants at the toy store and she's got her eye on the entire goddamn Barbie aisle. "Wanna do the honors?" You hold out the shades by a leg. Jade leans over you so you only see her smile up to her teeth as she plucks the glasses out of your fingers, almost stabbing you in the eye on the first few attempts to get the aviators on your face. She eventually cinches a success and the world drops to a way more comfortable brightness setting. 

"Well? Am I hot or am I hot?" You both grin. 

"Definitely hot. I'm gonna miss seeing your eyes, though..." She pulls your new shades up into your bangs and bores a hole straight through your eye sockets; you find it surprisingly easy to hold her stare. 

"Not to worry Harley, I think you're gonna have plenty of opportunities to gaze in awe of my batshit peepers." You find Jade's fingers on the side of your head and push the shades a little higher up before you go in for a kiss. Jade's laughing against your lips before she molds to your touch and she tastes just like she did in the late hours of the night and it's soft and sweet and a little wild and you manage to reluctantly pull yourself away when you start to feel your blood getting a little too hot. Jade's smile is quiet as she pushes your shades back onto your face.

"Happy birthday, Dave." You tilt your chin so you can press your lips to your name on her wrist, faded for the wear but still painted on her skin in red ink. 

"Thanks, Harley." 

* * *

 "It appears that today is our one-month anniversary," Rose quips as you adjust your headphones and settle yourself in front of your webcam. You raise an eyebrow when you finally get good and comfortable. 

"I forget what the present for that one is—maybe an extra ten minutes of banter? Or was it a Freudian sexual analysis power trip? Oh wait, you've already done that eight hundred goddamn times already." You manage to emulate Rose's stature to a T - she had always found you surprisingly adaptable in situations you consider yourself vulnerable. Thin line of a mouth, impassive expression, callous wit geared and ready to go. It was like looking into a mirror, if a mirror could switch one's gender and annihalate their posture. 

"If I recall correctly, it was  _you_ who chose to discuss the bra sizes of your foster sisters. I am here to listen to what you say, and if that is what you choose to say, you cannot possibly hold me accountable for any ensuing discussion." You quirk an eyebrow, the only sign of a change in disposition she can really note past those damned sunglasses. She wouldn't be as good in her field as she is if she wasn't perceptive, though, and she's learning fast: the twitches of your lip, the unconscious gestures you make with your hands, all are becoming just as revealing, maybe more so, than a clean sight of your face. 

"Well, you didn't conclude that me living with two bangin' hot twins at a pretty formative part of my adolescence  _wasn't_ psychologically significant, so who's really at fault here?"

"We are not here to assign fault, we are here to continue exploring what we began to breach last week. I simply wanted to note that I am incredibly glad you took up Jade's offer to arrange these meetings." 

"Right back atcha, Lalonde. I haven't fantasized about running you over with a truck even once, which is fucking unprecedented for a therapist to the infamous basket case known as Dave Strider."

"Such touching words." You smile to lighten the blow, which Rose dryly mirrors. You could try to be as difficult as you wanted, Rose would still enjoy herself at these sessions. 

"What were we talking about last week? I'm a busy man and you're the one taking notes." Rose isn't the only perceptive one, it seems. She's careful to keep her notepad out of her camera frame, but you must be watching her more closely than she thought, perhaps tracking where her eyes are looking. Maybe there are benefits to those shades of yours. 

"We had begun with a recollection of your latest nightmare, I believe. You were trapped in a crow's body, picking at a corpse." Your lips thin out even more; even hearing it in retrospect seems to agitate you. 

"Well I'm still having the fucking dreams, if that's what you wanted me to get at here. I've had them for years, they're not gonna go away with a wave of your magic therapy wand."

"And yet you still won't accept my suggestion to get a prescription for benzodiazepine?"

"I don't do sleeping pills. Therapists one through six can tell you how fucking adamant I am about that one." Paralyzed by nightmares, and yet you refuse to take drugs to eradicate the dreams. Interesting. 

"Is your brother in all of these nightmares?" 

"He has a pretty set spot on the starring cast, yeah."  _Very_ interesting. 

"You usually overcome these by talking to someone afterwards, right? Usually Jade?" 

"Yeah."

"But she's not always available in the dead of the night."

"Yeah." Rose can see the cogs turning in your head, but what they're processing is beyond her for now. This is enough; it's more than she had last week, and she thinks she's starting to understand the root of all this. Maybe with a little more time, she can crack your case.

"What about Terezi? You used to go to her about these sorts of things, correct?" You shrug to buy yourself time. One of your go-to nonverbal responses, Rose has found. 

"Yeah, before she nailed down the friend deadbolt and holed herself the fuck up in her apartment. Batten the hatches and man the friend barricade, let no Dave through that goddamn door." Deflecting to your metaphors. Maybe this is bothering you more than you're letting on. 

"Remind me of the last time you spoke?" You think for a second; Rose suspects you don't really need the time. 

"Couple weeks ago, I guess. I knocked on her door to see what the fuck was going on and she just pulled it as far as the chain would go, told me shit was fine and slammed the door in my face. Not exactly a warm invitation to sit down and catch up on each other's lives." 

"Has she ever changed her behavior so suddenly before?" You shrug. 

"Not since I've known her. She used to have some bad weeks - some kinda baggage with her sister, it was weird and complicated and I never really got the whole story - but we'd still hang out. She's never totally blown me off like that before." 

"And there haven't been any instances between the two of you that might have led to this behavior?" 

"Nope. It's just..." You pause and really think, not just bullshitting to look casual, and Rose leans forward ever so slightly. "That one time I saw her, she looked...different. She looked kinda fucked up, to be honest. Like she hadn't been sleeping, maybe she was high, I didn't really get a good look at her face, but she was all hunched over and wouldn't look me in the eye and she was wearing this weird ass cape thing I'd only ever seen hanging on a hat stand in her apartment. It was all pretty fucking fishy, but I don't know jack about what it means. And—" You start in your chair, "Shit, a couple days ago, you know I end up awake a lot at weird fucking hours of the night and the wall between our apartment is pretty much nonexistent, but I heard some freaky shit coming from Terezi's place." 

 Rose raises an eyebrow. "Define 'freaky shit'."

You vaguely wave your hands in the air, like that's supposed to tell her anything at all. "You know,  _freaky_ shit. Pretty sure she had some guy over and there was some Red Room of Pain kinda stuff going down in there. I had to amp up my headphones pretty fucking high to drown that out. I think I'm still emotionally scarred." 

"And you don't know this man Terezi might be seeing?" This is all fairly speculative, but she decides to hear you out for the sake of it. Who knows, maybe talking it out will make you piece something together on your own.

"Nah, the last guy I knew Terezi was with was some angry little fucker from a year or so ago, he hasn't been around in a long time. I didn't know she was fucking anybody, and I sure didn't recognize the voice through the wall." 

"So you think Terezi's new paramour might be the cause of her strange behavior?" You shrug; you're backing off this conclusion, you're still unsure. Rose hopes you're right; she's beginning to grow uneasy with these implications. 

"I mean, I dunno the guy, and I dunno what's going on with Terezi, or if there's even a guy involved. It was just something I thought I heard in the middle of the night. Maybe she bought a TV and she's addicted to listening to porn or something, who the hell knows. It's Terezi, and she's a grown ass woman and if she doesn't want to talk to me anymore, I'm okay with that. I'm probably the one blowing this out of scale, she'll probably show up on my couch with a blunt in a week like nothing happened."

"How astute of you." 

"Of course it was." You smirk. You do love getting your ego inflated.

"Terezi was a very close friend, though. It must be hard, being suddenly isolated from her the way you are now." You twist your lips into some kind of noncommital gesture. Twisting around the truth in Rose's words, perhaps. 

"Like I said, it's her life, and she does what she wants with it. I've got shit to do, it's not like I'm sitting around on my ass angsting over how much I miss her or anything." A good answer. A safe answer. You fold your hands under your chin, probably in a playful jab at Rose's common gesture as you wait for her to say something. 

"You knew the last boyfriend, then? The, what was it, 'angry little fucker'?" You snicker as you nod. 

"Yeah, I third wheeled them a couple times. He was a pretty big dork, I was surprised Terezi was willing to put up with his shit." 

"Do you think he might have some clue as to Terezi's current situation?" 

"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know, I never dated the guy." A defensive reply...perhaps she's overstayed her welcome in this course of conversation. 

"Have you talked to Jade about this?" You seem to physically relax at the mention of Jade, it's almost endearing. 

"I think she asked about Terezi once and I just kinda said she's been hanging out at her place, I didn't really want to emotionally shit on her while she's dealing with all her work stuff." 

"A caring gesture put into very crude wording." 

"It's what I do best." 

"But perhaps it may be worth your while to share this kind of information with someone as physically and emotionally close to you as Jade?"

"Yeah, maybe." Rose notices something holding your attention on your side of the screen; even with your shades on, you seem to be focused on something out of the way. Rose angles her head, trying to make sense of everything in your camera frame. 

"Something the matter?" 

Your eyebrows bunch up; something unexpected is happening on your end. "Yeah-listen, can I call you back in an hour or two? I'm getting a shitton of messages, I think it's something important." 

Rose raises a coy eyebrow. "Leaving a therapeutic session for an instant message? I guess, privy to our terms of agreement, you do have the right to that so long as you reliably call in to these things at all." 

You make a scoffing noise in retort but it's half-assed; your attention is still thoroughly held by whatever message you seem to be receiving. "It's not a dumbass chat, or if it is it's a damn good one. Pester me when you're free and I'll call you again this week." Rose's curiosity is peaking by the second, but she's sure she'll have to wait until you next speak to hear this development. 

"Fine. Tell Jade I said hello." 

"Sure, later." Rose stares at the end call page for several seconds, her fingers rapping against her chin as she struggles to pick apart whatever's piling onto your plate.

* * *

You close out of your video call with Rose and pull open your Pesterchum window, which has been pinging off the goddamn charts for the last three minutes. The handle isn't anyone you've recently talked to, but you definitely saw Terezi's name in the caps lock previews spamming your screen, which was conveniently timed enough to catch your attention. 

\-- carcinoGeneticist  [CG]  began trolling turntechGodhead  [TG]  \-- 

CG: HEY SHITHEAD.  
CG: GUESS WHO THE FUCK IT IS?  
CG: THAT'S RIGHT, IT'S EVERYBODY'S FAVORITE DUMPEE BACK FOR MORE FUCKING HEINOUSLY AWKWARD AND MUTUALLY UNWANTED INTERACTIONS WITH YOUR STUPID ASS.  
CG: LISTEN UP YOU WHITEHEADED SHITSTAIN.  
CG: I'VE GOT SOME SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS TO DISCUSS ABOUT OUR MUTUAL FRIEND WHO YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED IS GOING THROUGH A SHIT RIDDEN FUCK PATCH.  
CG: IN CASE YOU'RE AS DUMB AS I REMEMBER, I AM IN FACT TALKING ABOUT TEREZI.    
CG: LOOK, I GET THAT YOU GET SOME KIND OF SICK PLEASURE OUT OF BEING A GIGANTIC DOUCHE, AND ON ANY OTHER OCCASION I WOULD BE PERFECTLY WILLING TO ACCEPT THAT BY CALLING YOU A HAIRY ASSLICKER AND PRANCING ABOUT ON MY MERRY FUCKING WAY.  
CG: BUT THIS IS REALLY GODDAMN IMPORTANT, SO I'M GOING TO NEED YOU TO GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS AND LISTEN THE FUCK UP.  
CG: I'M GOING TO WASTE MY FUCKING VALUABLE TIME AND JUST SIT HERE AT THIS GODDAMN COMPUTER AND WAIT FOR YOU TO SHOW UP, THAT'S HOW RIDICULOUSLY SERIOUS THIS SHIT IS.  
CG: BUT PLEASE, TAKE YOUR FUCKING TIME, I DON'T HAVE A LIFE TO LIVE OR ANYTHING.  
CG: I WANT YOU TO READ THAT TO YOURSELF IN THE MOST OBSCENELY SARCASTIC VOICE YOU CAN MUSTER, BECAUSE THAT IS HOW I WOULD SAY THAT IF I WERE SPEAKING TO YOU.  
CG: I JUST FUCKING LIVE TO SIT AROUND WAITING FOR DAVE STRIDER TO DECIDE I'M WORTHY OF HIS ATTENTION.  
CG: OH PLEASE, DOUCHEBAG GODS, GRANT ME THE PRESENCE OF YOUR HIGHEST PROPHET. GRANT ME COUNSEL WITH THIS ANNOYING PRICK THAT I MAY BASK IN HOW MUCH OF A FUCKING ASSHOLE HE STILL IS.

Damn, Lalonde really does have some kind of psychic fucking energy going on to successfully call this one. You sigh and rap your fingers on the keys for a few seconds before you decide to show signs of life.

TG: dude what the hell are you doing  
CG: OH MY, THE GODS HAVE ANSWERED MY PRAYERS. THE GREAT DAVE OF DOUCHE HAS DEEMED ME WORTHY OF HIS COMPANY.  
TG: think you can cut the shit and tell me whatever you were saying about terezi  
CG: OH, SO NOW YOU CARE, HUH? NOW YOU HAVE AN INTEREST IN THE FACT THAT I AM HERE AND TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU?

You can hear your own teeth grinding in your mouth.

TG: i swear to god im just gonna block you and go back to my business if you dont start talking like right fucking now  
CG: OKAY, YOU'RE ACTUALLY RIGHT FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE. ARE YOU LISTENING?  
TG: yes i am fucking listening will you please start saying something useful  
CG: I'M ONLY GOING TO SAY THIS ONCE SO LISTEN CAREFULLY.  
TG: oh my fucking god  
CG: TEREZI IS IN TROUBLE.  
CG: AND, BY PROXIMITY, YOU ARE ALSO IN TROUBLE.  
TG: what  
CG: TEREZI HAS GOTTEN EXTREMELY INVOLVED WITH SOMEONE WHO I HAVE RECENTLY DISCOVERED TO BE, IN THE SIMPLEST OF TERMS, REALLY BAD FUCKING NEWS.  
CG: MAYBE THIS WAS JUST ME BEING A FAILURE AT INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS YET AGAIN AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN HERE.  
CG: BUT THERE IS A CHANCE, AND THIS CHANCE IS MUCH LARGER THAN I THINK EVEN AN IGNORANT DOUCHENUGGET LIKE YOU WOULD BE COMFORTABLE WITH, THAT SOMETHING WILL IN FACT HAPPEN.  
CG: SOMETHING BAD.  
CG: I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO TALK TO TEREZI, BUT YOU SEEMED CLOSE TO HER SO MAYBE YOU CAN.  
CG: DO SOMETHING USEFUL FOR ONCE IN YOUR MISERABLE LIFE AND MAKE SURE SHE'S OKAY.  
TG: dude shes not talking to me either

A rare pause. Shouty Shitforbrains doesn't seem to be taking this news well.

CG: SO IT APPEARS THAT THE CHANCE THAT SOMETHING BAD MAY HAPPEN HAS JUST SHOT THROUGH THE FUCKING ROOF.  
CG: I REPEAT,  
TG: you dont have to repeat it i can read it right there you gigantic tool  
CG: SO BE IT.  
CG: BUT, IN ALL SERIOUSNESS.  
CG: PLEASE, TRY TO GET THROUGH TO HER. FOR MY SAKE. MAKE SURE SHE'S OKAY, BUT DON'T ENDANGER YOURSELF HERE EITHER.  
TG: how would i endanger myself what the fuck are you talking about  
CG: I CAN'T SAY A LOT, I'M PROBABLY IN JUST AS MUCH SHIT AS YOU ARE. NOTHING GETS PAST HIM, AND NOBODY REALLY KNOWS HOW.  
TG: who are you talking about what the fuck is this  
CG: IT'S THE CLOWN, DAVE.  
CG: IT'S GAMZEE.  
CG: YOU NEED TO BE REALLY FUCKING CAREFUL ABOUT GAMZEE. OR ELSE THERE'S GOING TO BE TROUBLE.  
TG: who the fuck is gamzee  
CG: TALK TO TEREZI. SOON. PUT THAT ON YOUR SCHEDULE RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I DON'T TRUST YOUR TINY FUCKING BRAIN TO REMEMBER.  
TG: i dont need to put it on a goddamn schedule ive been trying to talk to her for days  
TG: who the fuck is gamzee  
CG: DO WHAT I SAY. I FUCKING MEAN IT. I'M WORRIED ABOUT HER.   
TG: ok but what the hell am i supposed to do  
CG: I DON'T FUCKING KNOW. WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO. YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DO ANYTHING TO STOP THIS, SO AT LEAST DO SOMETHING. DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN.  
TG: what hold on im not about this cryptic voodoo shit

\-- carcinoGeneticist  [CG]  ceased trolling turntechGodhead  [TG]  \-- 

You sit back in your chair and run a hand through your hair, sighing out a breath that had been trapped in your lungs for just a little past expiration date.

That was pretty fucking weird.


End file.
